Jennifer sighed. Sometimes being a former beauty queen was a curse.
“If you’d like to wait for your wife before you look at the house, I can go ahead and answer any questions you might have. I’ve got all the information in my briefcase in my car.”
He shook his head. “No need to wait. I’d like to take a look around now. If I don’t like the place, Katherine won’t be interested.”
“Oh, I see.”
He chuckled. “It’s not that she gives in to me on everything. We each try to please the other. Isn’t that the way to have a successful marriage?”
“Yes, I think so. It’s certainly what Judd and I have been trying to do. We’re a couple of newlyweds just trying to make our way through that first year of marriage.” Jennifer nodded toward the front entrance to the sprawling glass-and-log house. “If you’ll follow me.”
“I’d be delighted to follow you.”
Despite his reply sending a quiver of apprehension along her nerve endings, she kept walking toward the front steps, telling herself that if she had to defend her honor against unwanted advances, it wouldn’t be the first time. She knew how to handle herself in sticky situations. She carried pepper spray in her purse and her cell phone rested securely in her jacket pocket.
After unlocking the front door, she flipped on the light switch, which illuminated the large foyer. “The house was built in nineteen-seventy-five by an architect for his own personal home.”
John Farris paused in the doorway. “How many rooms?”
“Ten,” she replied, then motioned to him. “Please, come on in.”
He entered the foyer and glanced around, up into the huge living room and to the right into the open dining room. “It seems perfect for entertaining.”
“Oh, it is. There’s a state-of-the-art kitchen. It was completely gutted and redone only four years ago by the present owner.”
“I’d like to take a look,” he told her. “I’m the chef in the family. Katherine can’t boil water.”
Feeling a bit more at ease, Jennifer led him from the foyer, through the dining room, and into the galley-style kitchen. “I love this kitchen. I’m not much of a cook myself, but I’ve been taking gourmet cooking lessons as a surprise for my husband.”
“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 going to 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.
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