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.
At 11:52 a figure in a gray coat climbs the back stairs, moving like they've done it a hundred times. Mara steps out. 'Police! Hands!' The figure freezes, then slowly turns. The face under the hood makes her stomach drop. It's her own.