Inside, the crowd was boisterous.
Everyone seemed to be endlessly jovial, the young and fashionable amongst the old and talented. Nothing was out of place.
Strike that: nothing was visibly out of place.
Hugo stood in a circle of around 10, most of them expressing opinions on topics the young actor couldn't care less about. He was more than exhilarated when his phone buzzed in his blazer' pocket.
Three words were all it took to cheer him up instantly.
Bring the body.
A sly smile plastered upon his pale face, and he excused himself from the exuberant crowd. He had been dying to make his slick escape for over fifteen dire minutes. Taylor, for one, was provoking him to extents he hadn't known possible.
His fingers dashed across the screen, spelling out a somewhat enthusiastic reply before striding towards the main exit.
"Psst," he heard as he was almost out the heavy doors. His deep grey eyes, the colour of angry clouds, flicked around. They came to a striking stop when they latched onto a pair of almond-shaped Indian gems. A single eyebrow of the same eyes lifted as their lips mouthed, Is it a go?
Hugo smiled a natural heart-melter before whispering back to the boy who stood nearly ten feet away from him, a trumpet-style champagne glass lingering in his clammy fingers as he pretended to be interested in whatever the other suit-clad men were saying. "Hell yeah."
"Hugo, where on Earth are you?" Bric sighed, not the least bit infuriated, but solely worried that the plan would be spun-off axis due to much-unwanted tardiness.
Right about then, Hugo's footsteps could be heard hustling down the corridor. Bric let out a sigh of relief, imitating herself fainting of joy before getting to her feet from her previously assumed kneeling stance at the sight, and firstly sound, of the boy.
"Took you long enough!" she said as he came into earshot. The boy's raven-coloured hair had been wind-tousled from the running he'd done from the main hall, to retrieve the corpse, and back here.
"Yeah well," he panted, dropping the bag. "Taylor wouldn't shut up. Plus, Amar held me up a little. Forget it." He nudged the duffel towards her with the tip of his leather oxfords.
Bric strutted over and assumed a squat, unzipping the back in one quick movement before looking up into Hugo's eyes. She sighed a soft breath, realising that this would be the end of her Hollywood innocence as she knew it. Of course, to the rest of the world she would still be the same Bric Martinez - but not to herself.
She flicked the zips open again with a single finger at first, and passed Hugo his pair of rubber gloves. Then, hands fixated on each side of the bag in an effort to hold them down and out of Hugo's way, Hugo altered his stance to pull the limp, long body out of the bag. After, he propped it against his foot in the time it took for Bric to toss the bag aside, but only after grabbing the other garments from the bag - the stilettos, stingray skin clutch and posh jewellery.
Hugo slipped the shoes onto its feet, and slid her statement cuff up along its slender arm, then proceeding to gently pierce its ear lobules with a pair of diamond earrings.
Hugo then took hold of the corpse's upper body as Bric took hold of her legs - the long legs that flawlessly matched Alma's.
They counted to three before lifting the body and placing it in the exact same place Alma had taken earlier. As they shifted her into the perfect position, their lips were overcome by smiles of accomplishment, self-satisfaction.
As she bent to retrieve it from the bag, Bric took a fraction of a moment to smile at the string of pearls before letting an end of the string go, the off-white shiny, smooth pearls hitting the floor with soft ting, tick, ting, noises all over. A few she made sure to scatter around her neck, in the pooling blood.
Hugo then reached deeper into the backpack for the bandage-and-brown paper bag-encased-murder weapon, a blade so clean and precise it could've sliced right through lean raw meat effortlessly - what less a human being.
He glanced at Bric, the blade in his hand. After a slight moment of hesitation, he spun the blade and held it out towards Bric. "You do it," he offered as she gave him a look of inquisition. She stared at the blade before enclosing her fingers around the black handle, taking one last brief look at the beautiful body before resuming her kneel and muttering, "Sayonara, sucker," with a smirk, stabbing the blade deep into the body's solar plexus.
