Joshua tilted his head to the side and smiled. “It makes this the sharpest thing in the universe.” He turned to the goons beside Riggs and nodded. The man with his wrappings down off his mouth smiled, his shaded eyes darting toward Cole before he knelt down and yanked Riggs’s pantleg out of his boot. He unzipped the expander on the side of the flightsuit’s leggings, then slid the black fabric up past Riggs’s knee. He pulled hard, bunching the material in a band so tight around his thigh, that Riggs grimaced in pain.

Cole stared at Riggs’s exposed, pale leg and noticed for the first time a trough in the rack right behind the thigh, running from side to side. The goon performed the same ritual on the other pantleg, unzipping the boot expander and yanking the material up high.

“What do you want to know?” Cole asked.

Joshua flashed the briefest of smiles, there only for an instant. He frowned and shook his head. “For starters, I want you to stop asking me questions. I want the both of you to concentrate instead on spilling your guts.”

The goons laughed at this. Joshua nodded to one of them and jerked his head toward Cole; the man came over and stood by his side. Cole expected him to jam his fingers in his ribs or armpit, just as he had with Riggs, but the man clamped his hand over his mouth, instead.

He pulled Cole’s chin to the side, forcing him to watch as Joshua knelt down in front of Riggs with the two handles held far apart. Cole saw his friend’s boots twitch, straining against the ropes. Riggs tried to yell something, but the other goon clamped his hand around his mouth, forcing the two former friends to look at each other. Riggs’s eyes were wide, his nostrils flaring with desperate, shallow breaths.

Taking extreme care, Joshua slowly inserted one of the handles in the rack’s trough and fed it behind Riggs’s legs until it slid out the far side. He again grasped both handles and held them far apart, his muscles straining as if pulling the invisible thread taut. He looked back at Cole and smiled, then turned to Riggs’s legs.

Cole could feel his own eyes bulging as he shouted into the furry mitt covering his mouth. His cheeks filled with the muffled roar of his own voice as Joshua brought the handles toward his chest. Cole knew Joshua would turn to him, would give him one last chance to speak before he did anything bad. Or maybe it would all be a cruel joke. A hazing ritual. A prank meant to bond them together.

But Cole was wrong.