Free Back From the Undead by DD Barant

ring.
    “Feel safer now?” he says.
    “Loads. You ready?”
    “I am.”
    He chuckles when I tell him where to meet us and what direction he should arrive from. “My, you are being cautious,” he says. “How soon?”
    “An hour.”
    “I’ll do my best.”
    “You better. I won’t wait there more than ten minutes.”
    “Then I better leave now.” He hangs up. Again, not petty—he just wants to remind me that I don’t hold all the cards. He has something he thinks I want, and he can walk away at any time, too.
    There are three ways to set up a meet like this. One is the public option: Surround yourself with a crowd, making it unfeasible to start any sort of mayhem that could injure civilians and providing you with cover if you need to disappear quickly. Better for criminals than cops.
    Another is the isolated location. Someplace you can control the entrances and exits, hide surveillance and snipers, keep a lid on the situation. Better for whoever gets there first—but only when you have the support personnel, prep time, and intel to back your play. We’re a little thin on all three—Charlie’s a great resource, but even he can’t stand in for a federal agency.
    So we go with option number three, a level playing field. And I do mean level—sea level to be exact. We’re headed for Boundary Bay Regional Park, which sits on a spit of land extending into the bay itself. It’s very close to the border—in fact, you can see the row of spiderwebbed poles in the distance, marching right off the beach and into the water. That’s an additional bonus, one there to keep Stoker honest, but the real reason we picked this location was the tidal flats. At low tide—which is in about fifteen minutes—the flats stretch for mile after muddy mile, a vast, soggy expanse of nothing. Even if you have your own private submarine or aircraft, you’ll be visible long before you arrive—and the proximity of the fence means you can’t use any sort of magic unless you want a Black Hawk helicopter swooping down on you.
    We arrive by boat, a flat-bottomed skiff we rent at a nearby marina. It takes us a little longer than the hour I gave Stoker, but I’m not worried he’ll leave if we’re not there when he shows up. It’ll take him a while to walk across the flats, anyway, and I made sure he’d be the one slogging across them on foot.
    We wait in the boat. It’s a calm, cloudless night, the half-moon above us bright and strong. The surf laps against the beach, competing with the distant pulse of a chopper, and the smell of wet sand and exposed seaweed fills my nose. I can see a spot of light in the middle of the flats, flickering as it sweeps side-to-side, getting nearer. Good; he’s not making any attempt to conceal himself.
    Charlie and I get out of the boat. Eisfanger’s not with us. We take a few steps up the beach, but stay near the shoreline.
    Stoker trudges up. He’s in jeans and a black T-shirt that stretches tightly across his massive chest. He’s just as enormous as I remember, a giant of a man in peak physical shape. He’s got the flashlight in one hand and nothing else.
    “Jace,” he says neutrally. “Charlie.”
    Charlie’s been playing with a pair of steel-cored silver ball bearings ever since we came ashore, rolling them around in one hand. It makes a noise you can barely hear, but I know it well. Charlie can throw those ball bearings at just under the speed of sound, and he keeps an even dozen of them in spring-loaded holsters up either sleeve. His only response to Stoker’s greeting is to click them together one-handed, the sound eerily like cocking a gun.
    “We’re here,” I say. “Let’s see your cards.”
    He shakes his head. “You haul me out to the middle of nowhere and expect me to make my case? I wish I could, but it’s not going to be that easy.”
    “Oh? Exactly how hard is it going to be?”
    “That depends. What will it take for you to trust me?”
    “You in a federal prison and