The hotel manager refuses to let Colter look at security footage unless he has a badge. Colter mutters that he doesn’t have time for this and instead goes to meet with Katy and Susanna to inform them about the pregnancy. (Why isn’t Katy at the hotel looking through security footage? She has a badge! It’s her job! Whatever…) They’re now convinced that Riley had a stalker who kidnapped her and damaged Vincent’s car out of jealousy. And the footage, which Bobby and Randy took care of, reveals that the person who smashed Vincent’s car has fun floral nail polish: Cheryl. Immediately, Katy reveals some more small-town gossip. Cheryl wasn’t so much Riley’s friend as she was her shadow.
They find Riley’s car and phone stowed away in Cheryl’s garage. Inside the house is a tragic and disturbing scene. Cheryl is dead, and on the wall above her body are the words “RILEY IS MINE FOREVER” written in blood. Strewn around the room are love letters, poems, and romantic journal entries about Riley that match the one in Riley’s locker. This wasn’t “cool girl worship,” as Katy used to think about Riley’s relationship with Cheryl. It was a decades-long crush that intensified when Riley came home from New York pregnant and reunited with Cheryl at the garden shop. But Riley is still nowhere to be found. If this is a murder suicide, where is the other victim? Colter gets his Dexter on and notices that the bloody handwriting doesn’t match the love letters. Not only that, but the message is too clean. There’s no way that it was written by someone who was bleeding out. Someone took advantage of Cheryl’s feelings for Riley and framed her for the disappearance.
Todd describes the man’s car, license plate, and produces a coffee cup from his hotel. That’s enough to give Colter a new location to check out. He calls Randy (Chris Lee) and Bobby (Eric Graise), who are now officially business partners. They identify the mystery man as a club owner named Vincent Rourke (Christopher Russell), who has been blowing up Riley’s phone. He has a wife and two kids back in New York. Randy does not call this behavior scandalous and makes a comment about how that “never stopped any dude in the history of ever” instead. Is Randy on his way to becoming a feminist ally?! Reno really did change him!
Colter convinces a valet driver that he’s there to investigate an insurance claim on Vincent’s car, which looks like it was recently in a wreck. He peeps Vincent’s hotel room number and swipes a key from the manager. When he gets to the room, Vincent attacks him! But then, shocking reveal: Riley’s five months pregnant, and he’s the father! (If you couldn’t immediately tell by his handsome Canadian face, Russell has been in a lot of Hallmark movies. Vincent isn’t a perfect dude, but there’s no way he could be the villain of this story.) He tells Colter that Riley was considering getting an abortion and that he wanted her to know he was there for her, at least financially, if she decided to have his baby. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, someone in a ski mask smashed his car. That’s odd.
A Desperate Couple Emerges in ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 18. Randy runs a GPS locator on Cheryl’s phone and tracks it to the home of a couple named Monica (Hayley McFarland) and Tyler Harper (Tom Stevens). The wife is a nurse. The husband is a maintenance fixer-upper type who was working on Cheryl’s house. Katy says that they’re good people. At their house, Katy and Colter find two graves in the backyard for Monica’s miscarried babies. Not only have they had a rough time trying to have a child of their own, but that suggests a possibly heightened level of intensity regarding fertility and pregnancy. It’s not necessarily a red flag, but sure enough, they’re the ones who took Riley and killed Cheryl.
Riley wakes up in a creepy nursery with a cradle and medical equipment where Monica performs an ultrasound on her and then informs Tyler that they’re having a girl. She shames Riley for even considering ending her pregnancy. Yeesh! Monica and Tyler are low-key homophobic, anti-abortion murderers. Meanwhile, Team Colter’s legal one-woman band, Reenie (Fiona Rene), pulls the Harper’s records and confirms the fertility struggle and Tyler’s criminal history. She also finds out that Monica’s real name is Lisa, and that she was recently referred to a psychologist after posing as a NICU nurse. Between the two of them, they’d never be able to pass the background check necessary to adopt a child. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Colter and Katy bring Tyler, who in the meantime got into a chase with the cops and shot an officer, to the sheriff’s station. Colter tells him that they already have invoices for housework linking Tyler and Cheryl. (Monica said that one reason Cheryl had to die was because she connected them to Riley.
