have done something, stopped her, gotten her help."
"There was nothing you could have done," she said, placing her hand on his arm.
"We'll never know, will we?" Bitterness tinged his voice. "Anyway, these past few days, I've been getting letters about Pamela. Anonymous ones. Like someone blamed me for her death." He took a deep breath. "I wondered if Drake might be getting them as well."
"If he is, he hasn't told me." She didn't mention Drake's bad mood. Had he lied to her about it being because of work? She didn't want to even think it. The one thing they had going for them was that, no matter how painful, they always told each other the truth.
But she had an awful feeling Tony had found the reason for Drake's strange behavior.
"Pamela has, had a sister. I think she's behind the letters, but I haven't been able to track her down. I thought maybe Drake–anyway, maybe you could talk to him about it? It wouldn't work, coming from me. We'd only end up fighting about Pamela. Like we always do." He looked down at Cassie, his eyes filled with concern. "But if it's her, she needs help. Before she does something rash…"
Like kill herself, Cassie finished silently. Like her sister did.
"I'll talk to him," she promised.
They strolled into the central space that held a large communal kitchen between the children's area and the food bank, serving to segregate the adult and pediatric clientele. He nodded thoughtfully at the layout; the entrance to the area was also central so the volunteers working in the kitchen could keep an eye on everyone coming in and out.
"How 'bout panic buttons?" he suggested. "Here, in the dining area and the daycare?" He gestured to the high ceilings. "And we'll tie the smoke detectors into the system as well."
"Good idea," Cassie said, more comfortable now that they were talking business once more. They walked out to the second floor landing.
Tony glanced up at the steps leading to Drake's apartment on the third floor. "You want an alarm or motion detector at that door?" he asked, not using Drake's name. "Anyone could get up there unnoticed." Before Cassie answered, he jogged up the steps, examined the locks. "I can redo these with the rest, no charge."
"Thanks. Let me talk to Drake about it."
He shrugged. "All right." They climbed back down to the first floor. "The social worker's and Juliet's offices will need motion detectors and extra locks," he noted. "Anyone else going to have confidential information that will need protected?"
"We've got a grant from the Gates Foundation for an electronic medical record system that's supposed to be secure," she told him. "But we'll still have some drugs and equipment that will need protected."
"Not to mention the computers." He moved around, checking the height of the windows from the ground, the layout of storage areas. "Panic buttons in all the patient and client areas?" She nodded, and he made more notes.
The clamor of racing footsteps interrupted them. "Cassie, Cassie!" A small, dark whirlwind sped past Tony and into Cassie's arms. Antwan Washington, just turned four, jumped up and down. "Where's my joke?"
Cassie grinned and set the boy back down on his feet. "How do you get a Kleenex to dance?" she asked, squatting down to his eye level.
"I dunno," he said after careful consideration.
"Blow some boogie into it!" she answered, giving him a raspberry kiss and swinging him off his feet in a parody of the boogie-woogie. She was rewarded by joyous peals of laughter.
"Hey, Little Man," Tony greeted the youngster.
"Tony!" Antwan was ecstatic. He leapt from Cassie's arms into Tony's. "Spin me!"
"Your wish is my command." Tony began to whirl Antwan, lifting him to ever dizzying heights.
His mother, Tammy, appeared in the doorway, her arms filled with juice boxes, books and a bag of toys to occupy her son while she and Cassie worked.
"Sorry we're late," she said, her hand smoothing her black hair from her dark skinned face. The young