Chapter One: The Woman in the Rain

He blinked, and her features became so unfamiliar that they meant nothing at all. Through the rain, she looked directly into the lens. Her lips moved. The shutter fell. She passed behind an advertising screen across the road and never emerged. “What did you get?” Tang Li dashed out from beneath a convenience-store awning, holding her notebook over her head. She had once been Shen's reporting partner at the *Linchuan Evening News*. After the paper threw him out, she was one of the few people still willing to buy him coffee. “A jaywalker.” Shen checked the image. It was better than he expected. The umbrella sat at the intersection of the frame's diagonal lines, and the woman glanced back while raindrops hung like silver needles.