“Enemy Mind” by Maggie Shayne

SUBJECT:Zach Ingram, brawny brain, aka Pro­fes­sor Ingram

FAMILY HISTORY: The Ingram heir, broth­er of finan­cial whiz Jake

DEEPEST SECRET: He’d always envied his broth­er — until now …

Pro­fes­sor Zach Ingram was believed to have clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about genet­i­cal­ly altered humans, and agents from the top secret MEDUSA want­ed it enough to kid­nap him. But was the iron-willed aca­d­e­m­ic tru­ly the one they sought? Beau­ti­ful psy­chi­a­trist Dr. Maisy Dal­ton was unwit­ting­ly brought in to hyp­no­tize the rugged­ly hand­some Zach into talk­ing about the “mem­o­ries” hid­den with­in him. But the inno­cent doc­tor could­n’t con­trol her feel­ings for the mys­te­ri­ous man who spoke of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty and some­thing called the Extra­or­di­nary Five. In her heart, Maisy knew Zach was telling the truth, and was will­ing to risk her life and love to help him unrav­el the secrets of MEDUSA and the poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous X5 …

[amtap book:isbn=0373613687]

Descrip­tion: Psy­chol­o­gist and hyp­nother­a­pist MJ (Maisey Jane) Dal­ton receives a call from a frus­trat­ed moth­er, ask­ing her to come and help her son, who had been res­cued from a cult. Maisey is an expert in cult depro­gram­ming and mem­o­ry recov­ery, and the moth­er’s plain­tive tone con­vinced her to at least go and take a look.

But when Maisey arrived at the out-of-the-way ranch house, things did­n’t seem right. The “home cooked” meal was dis­guised fast-food. The house had sup­pos­ed­ly been in use for sev­er­al decades, yet some rooms were unused and decrepit, and fur­ni­ture was far too new to fit the sto­ry. Bob, who had said that the patient was his broth­er, could­n’t describe any details of their shared childhood.

Yet the biggest mys­tery was the patient. She was told his name was Jake Ingram, but he whis­pered that his name was real­ly Zach. He was sup­posed to have been recov­er­ing from being drugged by the cult, yet he seemed worse than bet­ter. He also seemed gen­uine­ly ter­ri­fied of his sup­posed family.

At the same time, the real Jake Ingram is busy solv­ing a com­put­er theft at the World Bank. A theft that only some­one of his genius could have per­formed. But when he learns his fos­ter broth­er had dis­ap­peared, he goes in search of him.

Part of a series of romance nov­els involv­ing what is described as the “Extra­or­di­nary Five”, five prodi­gies cre­at­ed years ago by a secret orga­ni­za­tion, and now sought by mys­te­ri­ous forces. There is no com­plete res­o­lu­tion except to the kid­nap­ping and the romance between Maisy and Zach. And, there is no hyp­no­sis involved, although there is one scene where Bob tries some heavy-hand­ed mem­o­ry recov­ery tech­niques involv­ing Sodi­um Pen­tathol. How­ev­er, you would­n’t know that from the cov­er, which shows Maisy dan­gling a shin­ing pen­dant before the eyes of a slump­ing Zach.