Bring It On, Detective

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"READY TO CATCH the criminal?" He playfully smirked at the lady when they were done discussing their ideas. Elisheva stared at him behind her eyelashes as the right corner of her lips curled upwards.

"Bring it on, Detective."

His eyes darted towards her natural rosy lips, which carried a sexy smirk, and her smirk grew even wider upon seeing that he was staring at her lips.

"You'll receive a kiss from me once we catch the culprit."

Nanlaki ang kanyang mga mata na napatingin kay Elisheva. With her sultry eyes, she looked at him. Kumabog ang kanyang dibdib sa narinig at parang may bara na namuo sa kanyang lalamunan.

Fuck. He heard her right. This time, he's sure of it.

Pinaningkitan niya ito ng mga mata. "Tease me more, and you will go home with swollen lips."

"Why don't you kiss me here, then, and make my lips swollen?"

Damn. She really loves to make this hard for him.

"Cut the playfulness, woman. I don't want to get out of this van with a freaking hard on," seryoso niyang saad dito. The woman before him blinked as if she didn't expect him to say that.

Nilabanan niya ang titig nito, and moments later, she exploded into a ripple of laughter, her dimples showing and her eyes glistening.

Tangina. Naghihirap na siya pero tumatawa lang ito.

This woman. . .

"Labas na nga tayo!" She pulled the door open, and he quickly erased those naughty thoughts from his mind.

They went out of the van and started to walk towards the subdivision. They already told the officers not to let anyone leave because there are still further questions that they need to ask.

Nang makarating na sila, kita niyang nando'n pa rin ang mga na-interrogate nila. Pedro, the guard, was on his phone and there was a smirk on his face. The lady guard was sitting beside her daughter who handed her a bottle of water, and the family of the victims was just silent.

Jemmy's father was still looking at the void, unmoving.

Brushing his hair upwards, he looked at them one by one and muttered,

"We have already identified the culprit."

Pedro's smirk vanished, and from his phone, he looked at them wide-eyed. Jemma's father finally looked at them as if he heard some magic word, and his eyes registered something he couldn't comprehend.

"Detective, sino?!" A family member of one of the victims tried to approach them with tears in her eyes, but the officer stopped her before she could even do so.

"Do you know the power of influence? The words we say can already trigger a change in a person's mind." Elisheva pulled her baseball cap down, shielding her eyes from the sun.

"And this influence is sometimes dangerous, because it can lead us to be obsessed of something. For example, the contents of a movie or book can influence us so much to the point na magiging adik or obsessed tayo sa nilalaman nila.

When Officer Amado handed us the files, the first thing that the detective and I noticed were the birth dates of the victims. Consecutive months. The first victim was born on March 21. The second one was born on April 22, and the third one, and surely the last one, was born on May 22.

Now, you might be asking, 'anong meron kapag consecutive?'" Elisheva looked at the people around us one by one and shrugged. "That leads us to why the killer killed the victims on a certain day.