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the clues? He only needed to pick up a phone.
    Santiago was across the restaurant. Danny sank the disc deep into his pocket. He was nearly finished with his drink when Santiago returned with a tall American woman. “ Señor Daniel ,” he said, “ esta es María .”
    Danny stood.
    â€œMary.” The woman reached across the table. Her grip was strong.
    She dropped the leather bag slung over her shoulder. The waiter was at the table before she could sit. In Spanish, she ordered a drink. Her words tumbled off her tongue like misshaped stones, as if she looked it up in a translator only moments earlier.
    Santiago asked about her trip, how she like Valencia so far. She answered with a bright, white smile, looking at Danny more often than Santiago. Her blonde hair was short and smooth, the kind you’d see on a billboard. Danny found himself smiling.
    She returned his grin. When she did, her eyes sparkled like a car was behind him, the headlights forewarning him.
    â€œHow old are you?” she asked.
    â€œDoes it matter?”
    â€œMy clients are about to invest a billion dollars with your company.”
    â€œI don’t need their money.”
    Santiago laughed nervously. “Danny’s record is well established,” he said in his most affected English, an accent that was effectively sophisticated. “His age, I assure you, is of no consequence.”
    She nodded while smiling. She’d flown the better part of a day to negotiate when they could’ve met in the immersion room. How do Americans say? Santiago had said to Danny when he arranged the meeting. We meet old school. She wanted to sit in front of him, look him in the eyes and sway him with charm, perhaps nudge him and later bully him with facts.
    The waiter returned with a drink.
    â€œDanny Jones.” She used his full name, the name he now used. Danny Jones owned a thirty-million-dollar villa off the coast of Spain.
    Danny Forrester left the island.
    â€œThe wonder boy with no past,” she said. “The boy with no family, a teenager that, according to Santiago, learned Spanish within months of arriving.”
    Danny looked at his companion. Santiago shrugged. He did become fluent in Spanish, but she had it wrong. It was two weeks.
    â€œYou’ve invested extremely well and managed to stay out of the spotlight for a sixteen-year-old. What was it you said, Santiago? He is the reincarnation of Einstein with a taste for technology instead of stars.”
    â€œI, uh...” Santiago rubbed his birthmark.
    â€œHe’s right.” Danny lifted his cup. “And would you do business with Einstein at sixteen?”
    Her smile was less flashy, but genuine. Had she sized him up already? She lifted her coffee.
    All three drank.
    â€œI suggest you drop the name ‘Danny’,” she said. “Sounds like a kid I went to summer camp with.”
    Santiago filled the awkward silence with the wonders of Valencia while Señorita Maria nodded, occasionally flicking a glance at Danny. He was sixteen years old; she was right about that. And most sixteen-year-olds were full of hormones, enslaved by them.
    Not Danny.
    There was a famous study called the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment that measured children’s intellect with a proposition. The experimenter put a single marshmallow on the table. If the child could wait fifteen minutes without eating it, he or she would get two marshmallows. Those that waited the longest had grown up to be more intelligent.
    Danny would’ve outlasted them all.
    â€œI would love to see your city,” Mary interrupted Santiago, “but I’d like to discuss a few matters with Danny.”
    She launched into her presentation with ease—nonchalant and conversational. Her clients were aiming to become the largest manufacturer of biomites, not just in quantity but innovation. They saw the artificial stem cells as the future of humankind, the next step in