"Don't do that!" Jimena shouts.

"You see?" Alvarado says. "You're causing an incident."

Pablo sees that the soldiers are getting nervous. Rifles are unslung, bayonets fastened.

"Please, don't throw anything!" Marisol yells.

The missiles stop, but one of the townspeople starts to holler, "Miguel! Miguel! Miguel!" and the rest pick up the chant, Miguel! Miguel! Miguel! Miguel!

"These people are not doing your son any favors," Alvarado says.

But the chant keeps up-Miguel! Miguel! Miguel!-and more people come down the street. Cell phones come out-calls are made, pictures and video taken. The whole valley will be alerted soon.

"I will clear this street," Alvarado says to Jimena, "and hold you personally responsible for any civic unrest."

"We hold you responsible for civic unrest," Marisol says.

When Giorgio starts taking pictures of the crowd, Alvarado yells at Ana, "Tell him to stop that!"

"I've never been able to control him."

"Release my son," Jimena says.

"I do not respond to threats."

"Neither do I."

Arms outstretched, Jimena and Marisol move the crowd back about twenty yards from the gate, but more people keep coming until about two hundred are gathered in the long light of the summer evening.

Two television news trucks pull up.

"You'll be on the Jurez news tonight," Marisol tells Alvarado. "The El Paso news by morning. Why don't you just let him go? I know Miguel-he isn't even politically active."

"If Seora Abarca would agree to mind her own business from now on," Alvarado says, "perhaps something could be worked out."

"So Miguel is a hostage."

"Your word, not mine."

"I will call the governor," Marisol says, "I will call the president, if I have to. I am not without influence."

"Indeed, you are out of your social setting, Dr. Cisneros."

"Meaning that I'm not an indio?"

"Again, your words," Alvarado says. "I am only stating that I see you more in a Mexico City salon than on a dusty street in rural Chihuahua."

"My family have been here for generations."

"As landlords," Alvarado says. "As patrones. Perhaps you should consider acting as such."

"Oh, I am, Colonel."

Off to the side, away from the crowd, Jimena breaks down in Ana's arms. "They're going to hurt him. They're going to kill him, I know it."

"No they're not," Ana says. "Not now. There are too many eyes watching them now."

Pablo gets a call from scar. "Are you all right? Are you safe?"

"We're fine."

"How's Jimena holding up?"

"As might be expected."

"Tell Giorgio I need his photos."

"I will."

"Do you think they'll release him?"

"No," Pablo says frankly. "This Alvarado guy would lose too much face now."

It settles into a siege.

When darkness finally comes, the candles come out and the vigil begins.

Marisol calls the governor and is told that he will "certainly look into it." Then she takes the humiliating step of calling her ex-husband for help. He phones a friend, who phones a friend, who talks to someone at Los Pinos, who promises to "look into it."

They don't release Miguel that night, or the next morning.

The crowd fades away, but somehow it's arranged that a few people always wait by the gate, with signs demanding Miguel's release.

And Jimena Abarca goes on a hunger strike.

- The hunger strike of Jimena Abarca doesn't make international news.

Or even national news.

scar, though...scar makes it a daily, above-the-fold headline, telling his staff, "If we're not here to cover something like this, we're not here for anything at all."

For three days straight he makes it front-page news, running stories under Ana's and Pablo's bylines about injustice in the valley, about the suspension of human rights, about the army running roughshod.

Pablo is there when the first phone calls start to come in. At first they're official-the general in command calls to ask scar why he's taking sides.

"We're not taking sides," scar says, perhaps a bit disingenuously. "We're reporting news."

"You're not reporting our side."

"We'd love to," scar says. "What is your side? You can give it to me over the phone or I'll send Ana right over. You know Ana, yes?"

"We're not giving interviews at this point."

"And if that's your side of the story," scar responds, "I'll print that."

A flack from the governor's office phones to ask basically the same question and to observe that the other papers aren't making this front-page news.

"I'm not the editor of other papers," scar answers. "I'm the editor of this one, have been for quite some time, and in my experience this is front-page news."

He hangs up, taps his cane on the side of his desk a few times, and then says, "The publisher will call next. Not until after lunch, though, when he thinks I'm mellowed by a glass of wine and a full stomach."

The call comes at 2:05, ten minutes after scar has returned to the office. El Bho listens to his complaints, sympathizes with the angry calls he's had to endure from the Defense Department, the governor's office, and even Los Pinos, and then kindly says he will do nothing different than what he's doing except to add an angry editorial for tomorrow's edition.

He puts the phone on speaker so Pablo and Ana can listen.

"News articles are one thing," the publisher says. "Editorials are quite another."

"I have built my professional life on that principle," scar says, smiling at Pablo. "I'm glad we agree."

"So you intend to commit this paper to the position that the army is committing an outrage in Prxedis."

"In the whole Jurez Valley," scar says.

"I don't know if the board can accept that."

"Then the board had better fire me," scar says.

"Now, Oscar, no one said anything about-"

"As long as I'm the editor of this paper," scar says, "I will be the editor, and, by definition, the editor writes the editorials."

It's classic scar-firm, decisive, authoritative-but Pablo notices that he's aged. The mischievous glint in the eye has dimmed a little, his blinks are more frequent, his hip seems to hurt him a little more, and Pablo knows that the events in Jurez have played on their boss. On all of us, I guess, Pablo thinks.

Two more days into the hunger strike and scar's scathing editorial, the other calls come in.

The anonymous ones.

The threats.

"Stop what you're doing if you know what's good for you."

"Don't think bad things can't happen to you."

"I'm perfectly aware that bad things can happen to me," scar says. "Dios mo, they put three bullets into me."

"Then you should have learned."

"Ah, but sadly, I'm a slow learner," scar says. "My teachers in school despaired of me."

"Who are they from?" Pablo asks, guiltily conscious of the sobres, the envelopes.

"Narcos?" scar asks. "The government?"

"Is there a difference?" Ana asks.

"Until you can prove otherwise, yes," scar answers. He tells them to be careful, to watch their backs, and he increases security around the office. But he keeps running stories about Jimena Abarca.

- For the first three days, Marisol explains, the body uses energy from stored glucose. It's painful of course, as anyone who has experienced hunger knows, but not lethal.

But after three days the liver starts to consume body fat, a process known as ketosis, which is dangerous and can cause permanent damage. If the hunger strike goes into a third week, the body starts to "eat" its own muscles and vital organs. There is loss of bone marrow.

This is called starvation mode.

Marisol then gives them the old "4-4-40" rough standard for human survival: four minutes without air, four days without water, forty days without food.

They are in day seven now.

Fortunately Jimena has agreed to drink water, but won't take vitamins or other supplements. She lies on a cot in a friend's house in Prxedis, not far from the army post, and grows weaker every day. A thin woman to begin with, she now looks emaciated.

The army shows no sign of releasing Miguel, demanding instead that Jimena be arrested and force-fed, if necessary.

"Are we just going to let her commit slow suicide?" Ana asks. She has taken turns with other women from the "movement" sitting with Jimena. More people sit outside to make certain that if the army tries to arrest Jimena, they won't do it easily and the seizure will be recorded.

"You're a doctor," Ana says to Marisol. "Don't you have an obligation to intervene? Certainly you can't assist in a suicide."

"I won't force-feed her," Marisol answers. "It's torture."

"As opposed to starvation?" Pablo asks.

Going back and forth between Jimena and Alvarado, Marisol feverishly tries to find a compromise. Will Jimena stop her hunger strike if Alvarado will let her see Miguel? They both refuse. What if the army turns Miguel over to the Chihuahua state police? Jimena agrees, Alvarado refuses. What if the AFI takes custody of him? Alvarado agrees, Jimena refuses.

Then they both dig their heels in.

Jimena won't quit until Miguel is unconditionally released, and Alvarado won't release him.

It turns into a grim siege of wills.

And tactics-on the eighth day, a note arrives from Miguel, asking his mother to stop her strike.

"I don't believe it," Jimena says.

"It's his handwriting," Ana says.

"He was coerced."

"He doesn't want his mother to die!"

"Neither does his mother," Jimena says, smiling as she lays her head back on the small pillow. "Neither does his mother."