Best Laid Trap by Rob Rosen Page A

I’d already taken.
    Then all I had to do was wait. And since I’d waited for over a year now, what were a couple more hours, give or take? Still, I was sort of tired—what with all the trap laying, breaking and entering, sniffing, skiing, and what have you—so I sat on the cot and rested a bit. I didn’t mean to fall asleep but fall asleep I did, only to wake much, much later with the sky outside dark. That is to say, the sky outside appeared dark. Or at least the windows were dark. Completely. And that’s when my heart began to lub-dub in double time.
    I looked at my watch. I’d fallen asleep for close to four hours. It wasn’t nighttime yet. So unless there’d been a total eclipse or the sun had suddenly gone kerflooey, the sky outside in fact was not dark. Which meant that the windows were being blocked. And up in the mountains on a ski slope, that could mean one of two things: an avalanche or a heavy snow.
    Either way, I was now summarily and utterly and terrifyingly trapped.
    I know this because I tried to open the windows and the door, only to find that they would not budge. I also tried my cell phone. No surprises: no coverage. Which meant that the trapper was suddenly the trappee. Karma, it appeared, was quite the bitch. And it seemed she acted mighty quickly.
    Still I had a glimmer of hope. After all, Steve knew where I was. Or at least would know once he returned to his room. After he was done skiing for the day. Hopefully without going to the bar or the lodge’s restaurant first. Or—I suddenly realized a tad too late—before the maid made his room and possibly threw away the note. So yes, there was a glimmer in the otherwise dark cabin, now lit by the fire in the fireplace and by my candle, which I held in my hand for nothing more than entertainment value.
    And so I sat on the cot, layers of blankets wrapped around my body, and waited for my inevitable rescue. By Steve, my inevitable lover. Yep, cart before the horse again, but when trapped in a cabin beneath acres of snow, that’s the only place for the cart to go.
    Did I wait a long time? Um, yeah. Long enough for the candle to burn out. Though thankfully, the owner of the cabin had stocked it with enough wood to last until my rescue. I hoped. Because, in all honesty, I didn’t want to wind up a human ice pop. Plus there was food—some meager canned rations—but at least I didn’t have to crack open the caviar or pop open the champagne. Maybe for breakfast if it came to that, but I was certain my lover, Steve, would arrive long before then. Though suffice it to say, I would’ve gladly accepted short before then.
    In the end I didn’t have to wait nearly that long.
    I heard the scraping hours into my vigil. An axe, a shovel? Not a clue. A crowbar of a boner? Nice as that would’ve been, it was highly unlikely. But it had to be Steve, coming to rescue me. At last! I imagined street passersby stopping to ask us how our love light had been sparked. Because yes, street passersby are sometimes that nosy. And so my imagined reply was “He rescued me from a most certain and horrible death!” Well, since this was an imagined reply, we’ll say imagined death, but still. I mean, neither kind of death is all that fabulous.
    I jumped from the cot and waited by the door, the scraping growing louder with each passing second. Steve was barely a few feet away. I’d be rescued; I’d be married; I’d be well-fucked—not necessarily in that order. Then the door handle jiggled, and with a loud pop the door flung open and there he was!
    Not Steve!
    Wait. What? Not Steve? But only Steve knew where I was.
    “Are you okay?” asked the stranger who was clearly not Steve. He was shorter than six feet, lean instead of brawny, brown-eyed instead of blue, dimpleless, aquilineless, and, to repeat, not Steve! Though okay, he was adorable and, dare I say it, my hero.
    “I’ve been better,” I admitted, fairly dumbstruck. “But how did you find me?”
    He