Part 31- A Visit

Johnny's plane touched down at Heathrow Airport at 3:00 in the afternoon. He felt a pang of loneliness as he glanced around the cabin. Every other passenger—the only exceptions he could see were small babies—had pulled out a phone and was texting or calling someone.

"Yes, we just landed…"

"The flight wasn't bad at all…"

"Don't worry, I don't mind taking the tube…"

"Meet you at the usual spot?"

"So glad to be home..."

"Thanks so much…"

"Can't wait to see you!"

"Love you, too…"

Johnny was the only person on the plane who had no one waiting for him. But he was also the only person on the planet who didn't have a mobile phone, so it all worked out.

At precisely 3:00 in the afternoon, Lucas' cell phone rang quite unexpectedly. All four of them—Lucas, Sami, Will, and Allie—jumped at the sound. Lucas and Will had returned to the hotel just as Sami and Allie were beginning to watch The Princess Bride on television, and now they were all lost in the story as Inigo Montoya finally came face-to-face with the six-fingered man.

"Lucas Horton." Lucas walked into the next room so as not to disturb the movie's climax.

"Mr. Horton. My name is Julian Jones. We met today at HMP Brixton."

It took a moment for Lucas to remember what HMP Brixton was, even though he had only been two places—the courtroom and the prison—that day. "Of course. Thank you again for your kindness."

"Don't mention it." The man's voice had a lethally hard edge to it. "I have daughters. Twin girls, seven years old. A lot of the men here have daughters. The ones who don't have sisters or nieces—friends, grandchildren—well, we were wondering if you'd like to come back here. I know your family obligations are most important today, but if you can get away, we have a little gift that we think you'd really enjoy."

The ugliest part of Lucas was certain that he would.

"I'm on my way," he said, suggesting that his better judgment tell it to someone who cared.

Sami didn't look at all pleased that he was leaving again without explaining why, but he silenced her with a significant glance at Will. She needed to know about Will's plan to poison EJ. Hell, she needed to know that Lucas had spoken to EJ. But those conversations needed to take place in private, without Will and Allie eavesdropping or speculating.

Lucas had walked most of the four miles to the South London earlier that day. This time, he decided to take a cab. He wanted to see his gift as soon as possible.

By 3:30, they were making their slow way through the traffic near Heathrow.

By 3:30, Johnny had managed to scramble off the plane and through customs. He had been jumped to the head of a few lines due to his status as a child traveling alone. He would have made even better time with his own British passport instead of Tyler's American one, but the cover story about having an American father and an English mother worked again.

Although he had lived in London for most of his life, he didn't know the city well. He had always been escorted from place to place and never left to find his own way. Besides, EJ and the twins had traveled a great deal during those years between Sami's accident and Johnny's admission to boarding school.

He knew that he had 90 minutes, at most, of daylight remaining, so he found a map and headed on foot toward the hotel he had heard Lucas and Will mention several times. Luckily Heathrow was smack in the middle of the city.

Johnny was tired, and looked longingly at the black cabs that wended their way through the traffic. He had a few dollars, but he needed to save them for an emergency. His exhaustion wasn't an emergency, not yet.

The fourth or fifth time his envious gaze fell on a cab, though, his body stiffened with shock. The passenger was Lucas. Obviously, this was a sign from some higher power which wanted Johnny to be able to get on with this repentance thing.

Johnny was inches away from jumping into traffic and pounding on the cab's window when it occurred to him that the cab was heading away from the hotel, and toward South London. It didn't make sense that Lucas would be going to South London alone; Allie's testimony had been scheduled for early in the morning. Even if she had testified for the whole of the day, she should have been back at the hotel relaxing by now. And Lucas should have been hovering over her.

What was in South London? Hampton Court? The Globe Theater? Johnny didn't think Lucas looked like a tourist.

Then he remembered. HMP Brixton. He had long since determined that that was almost certainly where EJ was being held, though the journalists covering the story had been careful not to confirm his suspicion.

Johnny's stomach clenched.

Lucas was going to see EJ.

He wasn't exhausted any longer, but this had become an emergency. And the higher power didn't want him to get on with apologizing. It wanted him for some other reason.

He saw a vacant cab and fled to it. "Follow that cab." He pointed at Lucas' ride.

The driver did not look convinced. "HMP Brixton," Johnny tried. "American dollars all right?" He flashed his money as if it were no big deal.

The driver grunted in assent, and stayed close behind Lucas until they drew as near the prison as was allowed.

Johnny paid the driver and followed Lucas to the entrance.

A guard seemed to have been waiting for Lucas, and ushered him inside in a friendly manner. "We'll go in the employees' way. You aren't officially here."

Now things became tricky for Johnny. No one was going to let a child inside, whether he was the son of a prisoner or the son of a visitor or some strange combination. And it wasn't much easier to break into prison than it was to break out.

He decided to go with the completely brazen approach. He marched inside as if he didn't expect anyone to stop him. And for the first few checkpoints, no one did.

He arrived at another checkpoint in time to see the guard giving Lucas a perfunctory once-over. Then the guard used a code to open a locked door. Johnny didn't catch the code, and he doubted that the lock would take kindly to a guessing game. One wrong number probably sounded an alarm.

He stood on his toes and tried to see what was going on through a narrow, bullet proof window, but while he could make out a hallway, he couldn't make out anything else.

Frustrated, Johnny poked the "speaker" button below the lock. Maybe the guard and Lucas would let him join them if he asked nicely. At least, Lucas would vouch for Johnny's identity before someone caught him with his inaccurate passport.

"…A recreation area," the guard was telling Lucas. They hadn't moved any further down the hall.

So maybe Johnny would just eavesdrop for a while.

"It's a recreation area," Lucas' guide informed him. "For watching football, playing cards, socializing. Hardly anyone here has been convicted of anything, and we treat them as such to the extent that we can. They wear their own clothes, for example."

Lucas nodded. He'd been informed of that already.

"And we let them have as much time out of their cells as possible. If they're willing to conduct themselves appropriately, there is no reason for us to restrict their movement. Ordinarily there's very little trouble, as no one wants to lose his privileges. So naturally we were very surprised when things got out of control this afternoon."

There could be no doubt that by "surprised," the man meant the exact opposite.

"Even murderers think child molesters are scum," he concluded as he waved a key fob at the door. A light flashed from red to green, and the door swung open.

The smell hit Lucas first. He wasn't prepared and he gagged hard. Urine, excrement, and vomit didn't quite overwhelm the tangy smell of blood.

EJ lay semiconscious on the floor. His expensive suit was now ripped and stained beyond repair. One eye was heavily bruised; the other looked to be swollen shut. There was blood on his lips and he appeared to have been sick on himself.

Lucas had seen this kind of thing before during his own long years in prison, and he thought he had become largely desensitized to it. Still, the picture before him stirred up conflicting emotions.

A voice in his head—it sounded remarkably like his late, lamented Grandma Alice—told him that it was never, ever acceptable to enjoy another person's pain. You don't dehumanize even the lowest prisoner guilty of the most heinous crime. You don't do that, because that brings you down to his level.

Another voice in his head—this one a bit more like his mother—shouted the first voice down. He deserved it. He deserves to be debased. He deserves to feel pain. And you and Allie deserve to know that people you've never even met are on your side.

The second voice won.

"Good," he said.

EJ opened his one good eye.

Good? What was good?

Johnny restrained himself from punching the wall in frustration. It was nice that he had managed to get close enough to hear what was going on, but it was heart-stoppingly aggravating not to be able to see as well.

On the other hand, if EJ had been attacked, perhaps Johnny didn't want to see anything. He had hardly been able to stomach looking at Sami before her surgery, and he barely knew Sami. But EJ had always been there, at least until recently.

He was so close; EJ might hear him if he yelled. Maybe EJ could explain.

No, he couldn't. Allie had told him too much, and Allie didn't lie. Johnny had seen too much, and he knew what it meant now.

He rededicated himself to listening.

"Lying there, you're actually going to tell me that?" Lucas asked angrily.

Johnny couldn't hear EJ's response.

"You know what, I don't care. I told you before—you're right where I want you. I don't have anything else to say to you."

Johnny strained, but he still couldn't hear EJ.

"You think you can bait me into something? You can't even stand up and wipe some stranger's shit off your clothes. I'm not going to do anything, because I don't have to and I have too much to lose. But I want you to know something. Just because I'm not going to kick you now, that doesn't mean that I'm not capable of protecting my family. Before you ever darkened Sami's door, there was a guy named Franco. He thought he was some kind of Italian Stallion. You ever meet him? No, you didn't, because I killed him. He had a fire poker and he was going to hit my Mom over the head. So I took a gun out of the drawer and I shot him, because that's what it took to protect my mother. You ever look into your own family's records? I used to work for Tony—Andre—Tony—whoever it was. The hitman went for him, but he never tried it again. I killed him with my bare hands, though in retrospect I shouldn't have bothered. I will do it again, EJ, if that's what it takes to keep you away from Sami, or Will, or Allie, or Johnny—"

That was it. Johnny didn't want to see, and he didn't want to hear any more. He didn't want to know that Lucas went around killing people. He didn't want to know that Lucas would do it again, not just over Allie, but over him, too.

"STOP!" he shouted into the speaker.

Quicker than quick, a door inside banged shut and the door in front of Johnny opened.

"Who are you?" snapped the guard. He grabbed Johnny roughly; Johnny didn't bother to struggle as he was searched for weapons.

"Johnny!" said Lucas, unbelieving.

"You know him?"

"He's… her twin brother."

The guard evaluated Johnny and Lucas carefully. "You want him to see?"

Lucas looked at Johnny. Johnny's head nodded up and down without permission from his mind.

In the thirty seconds he had to plan, Johnny decided that speaking to EJ would be meaningless. EJ would lie. EJ had lied about Sami and he'd lied about Allie, and he'd probably even lied about believing Johnny was his son.

But if EJ had gone to so much effort to steal Johnny and Allie, then there was one thing Johnny could do to hurt him. It would be small revenge, but it was all Johnny could do.

He would look hard at EJ, turn away, and then give Lucas a hug and tell him that he was his dad.

When the door opened, EJ was in the process of pulling himself into a sitting position. His eyes met Johnny's. "Hi, sweetheart," whispered EJ hoarsely.

All of the years that Johnny had thought of himself, EJ, and Allie as the happiest of families collided with Allie's angry voice: he raped her, and I know because that's what he tried to do to me.

Johnny's mind began to spin so fast that he felt sick. His ears started to ring and he couldn't see clearly. He reached out aimlessly for something to hold on to, but his hand met only air.

Then he felt Lucas' hand on his back and leaned gratefully into the support. "Dad?" he managed. "Dad, I'm going to pass out."

Lucas' hands tightened on Johnny. "I've got you."

"Thanks, Dad," Johnny mumbled, but he didn't get to see EJ's reaction because he was too busy trying not to collapse.

Lucas wasn't going to delude himself into thinking that Johnny had somehow decided to become a model citizen and member of the family—in fact, he suspected that Johnny styling Lucas as "Dad" had more to do with EJ than it did with Lucas—but he savored the unexpected gift all the same. He felt a mean thrill of pleasure at EJ's unconcealed horror and hurt alongside his own happiness. Fake or not, it wasn't every day that your youngest son acknowledged you as his father for the first time.

But he didn't have time to dwell on any of it. Johnny leaned against him, weak-kneed, until Lucas had thanked the guards profusely and gotten them off of the prison's premises.

Lucas was trying to find a way to ask Johnny what he needed, and also how the hell he'd gotten himself to London, but the words wouldn't come. But Johnny broke the silence.

"Did you really kill all those people?"

Lucas' jaw clenched. "Two people. It was to save someone else's life both times."

"Does Mom know?"

"She was standing right next to me the second time. She walked in a few minutes after it happened the first time." Lucas mentally added the subject of Franco Kelly to his list of things he and Sami absolutely had to discuss at the first available moment—especially since what he'd told Johnny was technically true, but hardly the significant part of the story.

Johnny seemed steadier on his feet in the cold, dark, fresh air, but Lucas didn't think he was ready for an interrogation yet. "How are you feeling?"

"Awful," said Johnny succinctly.

"Hungry? Tired?" Lucas prompted.

"Hungry and I can't eat. Tired and I can't sleep."

Lucas nodded. "Join the club."

Johnny looked down at his feet. Lucas had never before seen Johnny make such a submissive gesture. "I need to apologize to Allie."

"Yes, you do. And you can in a few minutes. Right after you explain how you got here."

"I used Tyler's credit card and passport."

"And I suppose Tyler just gave them to you?"

Johnny shrugged.

"We'll talk about that later."

Johnny shrugged again.

It was strange for Lucas to retrace the steps he had made with Will earlier that day with his younger son. Lucas knew Will inside out; Johnny was a mystery.

"Do you often steal passports?" Lucas tried.

"Thought we were talking about that later." Johnny sighed. "No, I don't."

"What do you usually do when you're stressed?"

"Tennis."

Lucas couldn't stop himself from grinning. "Tennis? Really?"

"So?"

"So, nothing. That was my sport when I was your age. I had shelves of trophies, but it was the one sport Will wouldn't play. Basketball, baseball, lacrosse, archery, track, cross country—anything but tennis."

Johnny looked at Lucas with disbelief. "Really?" he mimicked.

"So?" Lucas mimicked.

"So, you've always seemed very… like the kind of person who thinks… not like someone who would play tennis."

"Did you know I went to one of the most exclusive military academies in the country? That until I met your mother I was all set to go to West Point?" Johnny shook his head. "Well, I did. Appearances were very important to my mother. Politics. Knowing the right people, wearing the right clothes, attending the right schools, being a member of the elite. She was a little bit like Stefano DiMera that way. But I decided that there are other things in life that are more important."

It was hard to say for sure in the dark, but Lucas thought Johnny's eyes might be glazing over. "I'll play you sometime soon," Lucas whispered, and escorted Johnny the rest of the way to the hotel in silence.

"You—can Allie and I be alone so I can apologize?" Johnny asked when they reached the door.

"If it's all right with her." Then Lucas called out in a louder voice, "Sami-Allie-Will! We have a visitor!"

TBC