Thomistic Predestination and Free Will What is the role of free will in Thomistic predestination?

My understanding of Thomist teachings:


people have free will to do what they want
everyone gets sufficient amount of grace (Sufficient for what, if they will go to hell as they live a sinful life.)
God just chooses some for salvation (predestines them), gives them a special amount of grace (efficacious grace) and these will go to Heaven
the others (who got sufficient amount of grace) are reprobates who go to hell


I do not see any real connection between free will and grace - I suppose there is no. Thus, I do not understand how God chooses whom to provide efficacious grace and how this can be aligned with a loving God (e.g. what if he chooses killers etc. for salvation).
The view of Norman Geisler, who was a Thomistic scholar, is that free will and election are not innately contradictory. Geisler wrote the book "Chosen but Free". He explains that while God's choosing and man's free will seem to be contradictory, philosophically they can't be shown to be so.   

A key verse for Geisler is 1 Peter 1:1-2 where God's choice is "according to" His foreknowledge. Calvinism claims that God chooses independent of His foreknowledge. Arminianism usually says that God chooses based on His foreknowledge of our faith. But Geisler based on Aquinas simply posits that God's choice doesn't contradict free will.