Harvey couldn’t believe how easily he’d lured his latest victim out of that seedy bar and into an even more seedy motel room across the street. She was a beauty, a bit of a rarity in the places where he normally sought his prey.

The news media called him a serial killer. Seven women between the ages of 19 and 37 all strangled during the act of sex over the past fifteen months. The police couldn’t catch him. They had his DNA but it wasn’t on record anywhere else that would identify him. He moved from city to city, chose different venues to pick up women, a bar here, a concert there. He kept shifting his pattern around so they couldn’t predict where he’d strike next.

The only commonality was that his victims were adult woman who were willing to have casual sex with a stranger. That was their fault. Chaste women had nothing to fear from him. Only sluts like his mother, like his long dead (by his hand when he discovered she was having an affair) wife need worry about feeling his steel-strong fingers closing around their throats right after he had his orgasm.

They were both enjoying the sex; raw, unfettered, primal. Harvey liked being on top.

He felt his tension peak and flow into her body and that was his cue. With sudden fury, he grabbed her neck with both hands and squeezed with all his might. This was his true climax. Feeling the life in her ebb and fade.

Something was wrong. Her neck. It wasn’t soft and supple. It was like trying to strangle a concrete pillar. There was no give at all.

She was laughing at him.

He stopped trying to choke her and sat up in bed bewildered.

“You don’t remember me, do you? I guess fifteen months is a long time and it was pretty dark when you picked me up in that cowboy bar just outside of Boise.”

With a strength that made him seem like a rag doll by comparison, she tossed Harvey off the bed and onto the floor. Then she was on him, pinning him down. Oh no! Her hands were around his neck. She was squeezing hard. He couldn’t break her grip or get her off of him. He couldn’t breathe!

“When you murder someone, you might want to take the time to remember what they look like, just in case they come back from the dead for revenge.”

In the last fifteen months, Harvey had murdered seven women. There would never be an eighth.