Detective Robert Goren considered his ability to keep his temper in check a great asset, especially when it came to interrogating an endless stream of killers, thieves and pathological liars. Impatience led to mistakes and mistakes led to the bad guy waltzing out the door, let go on some half-assed technicality. Therefore he looked over the evidence carefully, picking through every piece until he had what he needed to nail the bad guy. He wasn't easily rattled, and he made damn good and sure that they saw that. He could see their tricks and lies, and made sure they saw that, too. One punk actually had the gall to slap him. Goren just laughed in the kid's face. The brat is now spending the rest of his sorry excuse of a life in prison for murder.

Who has the last laugh now? Ha ha. Hope you enjoy eating prison food for the next fifty or sixty years, you little shit.

Then Nicole Wallace came along. She wasn't easily rattled either, and she could push his buttons just as easily as she could hit speed-dial on her telephone. God, she could push his buttons on just about anything she could think of–his mother, his father, his brother, his marital status, his job, his partner. Anything.

She had been calling herself Elizabeth Hitchens back when they first crossed paths. Nicole, Elizabeth, no matter what name she was using, she was still a murderer and world-class manipulator. She could get anyone to do just about anything for her, including lie, cheat, steal and kill.

She said I reminded her of you in a lot of ways, Bobby, except I don't have a loony mother that I keep locked up in a nuthouse.

Oh, that was pure Nicole.

She loved to goad him about his mother, loved seeing him wince at the slightest mention of her mental illness. She was one of the few people who could get under his skin and the bitch knew it.

His mother was dead now. She had lost her battle with lymphoma. Strange that Nicole Wallace didn't mention that little fact in her message, rub his face in it. Either she just plain old didn't know about his mother's passing or she was saving it for a special occasion.

She just wanted a family and I took that away...she can't control what she is.

Nicole loves to point out my mistakes...

"Bobby!"

Eames and the doctors were staring at him with concern and confusion. He must have put on quite a show.

"Are you okay? Maybe you should sit down for a while," Eames said.

"I'm fine. Sorry," Goren mumbled. "Where were we?"

The bitch can get under my skin even when she's not around. She probably knows that, too.

"I slapped her," House reminded him.

"Right," Goren picked up where he left off, like his friends being kidnaped by his worst enemy was an everyday occurrence. "And she wasn't mad at you for that?"

"She was surprised. Guess I can't blame her for that. But then she tied my arm back down, slapped me right back and laughed it off. I got her pretty good, too. Her nose was bleeding. That fucking bitch..."

"Interesting."

"Interesting? This is just interesting to you?" House shot a laser-beam that could have peeled the varnish off the coffee table and make the medical journals sitting on top of it burst into flames. "Why didn't she kill me, Bobby? You've figured out why, haven't you?"

No answer.

"Haven't you?" House's patience was wearing dangerously thin.

"I think so," the detective responded.

"Don't give me that. You know. Why did she let me go?"

"She wanted me to believe that she was getting her life back together. A new family, a new start. Nicole Wallace, the wife and soccer mom. I wasn't buying it for a second–"

"Like you would," Eames snorted.

"–I told her that she wouldn't be able to control her homicidal impulses. She would end up killing someone else, it was just a matter of time. You, Dr. House, were let go to prove me wrong."

"Are you wrong, Bobby?" Cuddy asked carefully.

Goren looked at the doctors, then at his partner. Eames stared right back at him, waiting patiently for his answer.

"No, I'm not wrong. Not about her. The only thing letting you go proves is that she let you go. That's all. It doesn't change the fact that she killed her three-year-old daughter out of jealousy. It doesn't change the fact that she killed her lovers. One good deed doesn't clean her slate. And as she wrote on my greeting card, you were just the beginning."

Wilson asked, "Beginning of what, exactly?"

The detective sighed and said, "She'll let me know soon enough. She doesn't want me to forget about her."