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Burn

By Erin Healy and Ted Dekker

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Salazar Sanso raised his binoculars and looked out over the edge of the steep drop into the rosy New Mexican desert. Through the lenses, he scanned the modest-sized Gypsy camp that hugged the base of the mesa. A brisk river separated it from twenty-five tents, which were a combination of sturdy canvas and tall wood-stilt frames. Surrounding them were several trucks and a few SUVs, larger tented structures that Sanso assumed were facilities for school and medicine and whatnot, and a large meetinghouse, which perhaps had once been a rancher’s barn.

Children played a game of kickball outside the camp, within shouting distance. A group of men smoked near the entrance of the meetinghouse. Few women in sight. Most of the community—a hundred, hundred twenty-five by his estimation—were tending their carnival booths in Albuquerque for the weekend.

“Tell me what I’m looking for,” Sanso said to the woman standing next to him. A hot breeze played with his hair and stroked his close-cropped beard. The wind’s uncharacteristic humidity predicted an approaching thunderstorm. In the west, crowding clouds positioned themselves between the camp and the fading afternoon sun.

“She’s fairer skinned than the rest, and taller.” Callista held out a grainy picture of a young woman in blue jeans. Sanso lowered the binoculars and took it. Long hair the color of New Mexico’s red rocks dunked in water, dark eyes, tan skin, heart-shaped face. She was walking with another woman who wore a long skirt, arms linked, heads inclined toward each other. “They say she is the daughter of a gají.”

“A non-Gypsy woman? But Jason Mikkado is the leader of this group.”

“Which is why they tolerate her. She’s his only surviving child after all. But
he has difficulty . . . controlling her. If he weren’t the rom baro, I think they’d have cast her out by now. They call her Rom Ameriko behind his back.”

“But not hers?” Sanso smiled at the characterization. An Americanized Gypsy. Someone who could be counted neither among the Gypsies nor the outsiders, the gajé. It was a biting insult.

“She doesn’t really care what anyone thinks of her.”

“Good. She’s younger than I expected.”

“Seventeen. But don’t be fooled.”

Sanso winked at Callista. “Are you saying you and she are cut from the same cloth?”

“When I was seventeen I was worth cashmere. She’s all denim. But she knows cashmere when she sees it. She aspires to cashmere. She and I could be . . . friends. Of a sort.”

Sanso returned to his study of the camp and noticed a rusty sedan approach¬ing from about a mile off, kicking up pink desert dust under the gathering gray sky.

“Will she cooperate?”

“If I’ve judged her correctly.” Callista paused. “She’s more like you.”

He wouldn’t stoop to asking how much more. Did the girl merely share his love of fine food? Or did she possess his need to trample the barriers set up by family and culture, barriers that prevented one from reaching his full potential? When he was seventeen he turned his back on his wealthy South American family so he could become the lord of his own kingdom. His father and brothers wouldn’t have allowed him to be anything more than a servant.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he said.

“For her, it could be.”

That was the truth, if she shared even half of his yearnings. “The exchange is still set for Tuesday?”

“Yes. One million dollars. We confirmed this morning.”

“What do they suspect?”

Callista placed her hands on her hips. “They suspect that we suspect nothing.”

The sedan, a dump of a Chevy, was speeding. Three hundred yards outside the camp, the car left the small dirt highway it had been traveling and made a beeline for the meetinghouse. The front driver’s-side tire looked low.
The car kept up its pace through the perimeter and came to a skidding
stop in front of the smoking men. The door opened and the driver stepped out, slamming the door.

Sanso homed in on the frowning face. Here was the denim girl, an outsider born on the inside, where he needed her.

Janeal Mikkado was wearing jeans. And flip-flops. Footwear the old-timers would disapprove of. Sanso already loved this child.

Her excuse for shoes flapped their way past the group of men. The eldest in the bunch averted their eyes. Sanso had always found this Gypsy quirk amusing: Everything above the waist was considered pure and good. A woman could bare her chest and no one would blink. But everything below the waist was considered dirty, impure, taboo. A true Gypsy woman should cover it up.

The youngest man in the gathering leered and leaned in toward Janeal, saying something that likely only she could hear. Quick as a striking rattlesnake, she jabbed him below his ribcage without breaking stride and proceeded into the meetinghouse. The man doubled over, holding his stomach, trying to laugh it off.

Yes, this girl was going to work out fine.

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