The Chosen

“Isn’t he a lucky man.”

Jennifer felt Mr. Farris as he came up behind her. Shuddering nervously, she started to turn to face him, but suddenly and without warning, he grabbed her from behind and covered her face with a foul-smelling rag.

No. No … no, this can’t be happening.

* * *

Had she been unconscious for a few minutes or a few hours? She didn’t know. When she came to, she realized she was sitting propped up against the wall in the kitchen, her feet tied together with rope and her hands pulled over her head, each wrist bound with individual pieces of rope that had been tied to the door handles of two open kitchen cabinet doors.

Groggy, slightly disoriented, Jennifer blinked several times, then took a deep breath and glanced around the room, searching for her attacker. John Farris loomed over her, an odd smile on his face.

“Well, hello, beautiful,” he said. “I was wondering how long you’d sleep. I’ve been waiting patiently for you to wake up. You’ve been out nearly fifteen minutes.”

“Why?” she asked, her voice a ragged whisper.

“Why what?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“What do you think I intend to do?”

“Rape me.” Her voice trembled.

Please, God, don’t let him kill me.

He laughed. “What sort of man do you think I am? I’d never force myself on an unwilling woman.”

“Please, let me go. Whatever—” She gasped, her mouth sucking in air as she noticed that he held something shiny in his right hand.

A meat cleaver!

Sheer terror claimed her at that moment, body and soul. Her stomach churned. Sweat dampened her face. The loud rat-a-tat-tat of her accelerated heartbeat thundered in her ears.

He reached down with his left hand and fingered her long, dark hair. “If only you were a blonde or a redhead.”

Jennifer swallowed hard. He’s going to kill me. He’s goingto kill me with that meat cleaver. He’ll chop me up in little pieces …

She whimpered. Oh, Judd, why didn’t I listen to you? Why did I come here alone tonight?

“Are you afraid?” John Farris asked.

“Yes.”

“You should be,” he told her.

“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”

He laughed again. Softly.

“Please … please …” She cried. Tears filled her eyes and trickled down her cheeks.

He came closer. And closer. He raised the meat cleaver high over her head, then swung it across her right wrist.

Blood splattered on the cabinet, over her head, and across her upper body as her severed right hand tumbled downward and hit the floor.

Pain! Excruciating pain.

And then he lifted the cleaver and swung down and across again, cutting off her left hand with one swift, accurate blow.

Jennifer passed out.

Chapter 1 (#ue0aa2576-ce19-597a-adc9-a9d4d1fd38a7)

There are some things far worse than dying. Judd Walker knew only too well the agony of simply existing, of being neither dead nor truly alive. For the past three years, eight months, and two days, he had lived in a world without Jennifer. In the beginning, the pain had been unbearable. His anger and rage had nourished him, keeping him breathing, allowing him to continue from one day to the next in a fog of torment. And then a few months after his sweet Jenny’s funeral, the fog had lifted and his one goal in life had become clear— to find and destroy his wife’s killer.

A part of him—some far removed, distant part—still loved Jennifer. Except for that faint, lingering emotion, he felt nothing, only a goddamn, blessed numbness. Even the anger and rage had burned out, leaving him little more than subhuman, caring for nothing and no one. Wanting—needing—only one thing from life: Revenge! His goal of tracking down his wife’s killer had become his only reason for living.

Judd dropped to his knees beside the snow-covered grave. He hadn’t wanted to come here, had tried his best to stay away; but the overwhelming need to be near Jennifer on their anniversary controlled his actions. February the fourteenth. Valentine’s Day. Jennifer had been a hopeless romantic, a trait that he’d thought silly in other women, but had found utterly charming in the woman he loved.

The woman he loved …

Judd reached out and ran a shaky hand over the chiseled letters on his wife’s headstone. She had been laid to rest here in the Walker private cemetery, in Hamilton County, alongside his parents, his older sibling who’d died as an infant, and countless noteworthy ancestors who were a part of southeastern Tennessee history.

As his father before him, Judd had been one of the most sought-after bachelors in the state. A real catch. A former Chattanooga district attorney with a reputation as a man who genuinely cared about the welfare of the citizens of his county. The only surviving child of parents who had each inherited an ungodly fortune, Judd had known wealth and privilege all his life. But he’d wanted more—more than being Judge Judson Walker IV’s son, more than being Senator Nathaniel Chisholm’s grandson. And more had been expected of him. He had been brought up to believe that he was, and always would be, one of the good guys, a man destined to help his fellow man.

“Why you, Jenny? Why did it have to be you?” Judd shivered as the damp and cold seeped through his jeans, the slushy, wet snow dampening his knees. The winter wind whipped through the old, battered, leather jacket he wore.

In his mind’s eye, he could still see Jennifer, the way she had looked the last time he’d seen her alive. Beautiful. Vibrant. Happy.

God help him, he should feel something—anything. He should be crying … ranting … raving. Or at the very least, his wife’s memory should evoke a sentimental melancholy.

Nothing.

Dry-eyed, cold, and somber, Judd rose to his feet. Before leaving the cemetery, he gazed down at Jennifer’s grave one final time. He wouldn’t come back again, not even next year on their anniversary. There was no point in pretending to mourn, not when there was only emptiness left inside him, only embers of his once fiery emotions.

“You deserved better, Jenny.” Judd’s voice blended with the howling winter wind. “If it takes me the rest of my life, I promise that I’ll find him, and I’ll make him pay for what he did to you.”

Judd walked down the narrow path that led to the arched wrought-iron gates guarding the family cemetery. Gazing up at the night sky, he blinked as the melting snow hit his face. With moisture coating his beard stubble and shaggy hair and beading on his leather jacket, he yanked open the driver’s door on the old Mercedes that had belonged to his father. He glanced over his shoulder and took a deep breath.

“Happy Anniversary, Jenny.”

He slid behind the wheel, inserted the key into the ignition, started the car, and drove away.

The only reason Griffin Powell had accepted Jillian and Gil Russell’s invitation to their dinner party was a long, lean, luscious redhead named Laura Barrett. Laura and Jillian had been best friends since their sorority days at Vanderbilt, and Griff and Laura had become casual lovers when he’d invested in her father’s faltering horse breeding farm several months ago. He found Laura, as a person, mildly interesting; as a lover, she was quite talented. Even though she might have originally had a misguided idea that their relationship would lead to marriage, they both understood that this trip to Knoxville would be her last, that their affair was coming to an end.

Laura tightened her grip on Griff’s arm. “There’s someone you simply have to meet.”

“Is there?” Griff replied.