Reborn In a Murderer’s Embrace (Dexter and Phoebe) novel Chapter 389

The floor was littered with three bodies, one of whom I recognized from the orphanage. The other two were strangers to me, not from the orphanage, but their presence here was a mystery.

Relief washed over both Bran and me upon not finding Colin among the deceased.

"These two were traffickers," Bran announced, eyeing the unidentified bodies.

Surprised, I asked, "How can you tell?"

"There's a tattoo here," Bran pointed to a tattoo behind one of the trafficker's ears, a cross emblem.

"The victims of the dismemberment cases had similar mutilated emblems behind their ears," Bran frowned, scanning our surroundings. "He's got to be okay. We need to get out of here."

I glanced around frantically.

Colin, please be safe.

"Is this the only way to get to the 17th floor?" I asked Bran anxiously.

"As far as I've found, yes. But I can't be sure it's the only one," Bran shook his head.

Colin might have found another way up to the 17th floor.

All I could do was pray for his safety.

...

On the 17th floor.

Dexter and Melody had been waiting in the open space at the center for a while.

Dexter had reverted to his usual aloof self, standing by Melody as if he hadn't been the one to save me last night...

Honestly, I was starting to wonder if it had all been a hallucination.

Annora tried to defend Colin through her tears, but her voice was drowned out by the others.

"Carter...hehe, Colin, we're going to be reunited," Zoe giggled, her speech slurred from her limited intellect, seemingly triggered by the situation and not entirely lucid.

"Colin, have you seen him? Did he come to you?" I rushed to Zoe, crouching in front of her, gripping her shoulders in desperation.

Colin couldn't be the mastermind. With his intellect, if he were behind this, he would've blended in with the crowd instead of being singled out so early.

Either Colin was in trouble, or... whoever was orchestrating this feared Colin's involvement and intentionally separated him from us.

Leaving us, the not-so-clever ones, to struggle through these layered predicaments.

"Colin..." Zoe smiled vacantly at me. "Went down."

My breath hitched. "What do you mean, went down?"