The rain starts at 11:04, exactly like always. Detective Mara Cole stands under the same broken awning across from the laundromat, pink neon flickering on the wet street. She has lived this hour forty times now. In sixty minutes, a man named Elias Voss dies in the apartment above. She has never saved him. Tonight she swears she will. The clock ticks. She steps off the curb.

Instead of saving Elias, Mara decides to catch the killer in the act. She slips into the alley behind the laundromat and waits in the shadows, gun drawn, watching the back stairs for whoever comes to do the deed.

No one comes to the back stairs at all. Mara waits the whole hour in the cold, gun shaking, and at 11:59 the lights in the apartment die. She races up to find Elias already gone, no killer, no exit. The alley was the wrong choice. The rain starts again at 11:04.