Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley) and Reenie Green (Fiona Rene) finally hang out and spend time together on Tracker in Season 2, Episode 4, “Noble Rot.” But of course, the only thing that ties them together is a missing woman. This week’s case uncovers some dirty little secrets at a vineyard wellness resort and gets surprisingly bloody before it’s all over.
Colter investigates a “corporate kidnapping” in ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 4 The episode opens with a woman (Jessica Sutton) stumbling through grapevines at night, pursued by an unknown assailant. Ten hours later, in the morning, Colter heads to Napa Valley to track down Quinn Ridgely. She runs a software company with Gray (Sofia Hirt), her wife and business partner, but she also goes missing from a business leadership summit at a vineyard. Gray has put a $50,000 reward on her, and since Colter’s favorite lawyer happens to be at the resort, he’ll take the case.
Reenie doesn’t think the corporate kidnapping is the real deal, even though both his wife and the security staff at the venue think so. There’s no ransom note or phone call. After an initial investigation, Colter agrees. At Gray and Quinn’s mansion, Colter notices blankets on the couch, indicating the couple slept separately the night before. Gray admits to arguing about the direction of their company. Colter also notes that the fight seems a bit staged. What if she wasn’t kidnapped? What if she ran away? He then meets William Locke (Neil Jackson), the owner of the estate, and the head of security, Peter Reynolds (Roshawn Franklin). They are as cautious as Reenie warned, so Colter immediately suspects that they are hiding something.
As Reenie and Colter begin investigating the estate, Reenie uses the old “catch more flies with honey” method to lead a security guard away so that Colter can view the CCTV footage. With the help of Bobby (Eric Graise), they discover that the footage showing Quinn talking to someone just before she disappeared has been erased. This brings them back to William Locke, who admits that Quinn came to him for “toad venom” to use as a hallucinogen. He leads them to the location where the audience saw Quinn running away in fear in the opening scene. Colter tracks her down to a construction site and finds her glasses in a boarded-up hole. Suddenly, the cheating reappears.
Colter also finds a severed human foot in the hole Quinn fell into, which is really disturbing. He says it has been there for a while and can’t be Quinn’s. He also thinks there are more bodies buried at the construction site. They follow tire tracks to a maintenance shed. There, Colter talks to a woman named Rona (Gloria Garayua) about the construction site and some crates that appear to have been moved recently. As Colter leaves Rona, he rightly asks Bobby to track her phone to find out who she’s calling. Bobby gives him a location on the property where Colter finds more bodies stored in crates. What’s going on at this vineyard? A man attacks Colter, though Colter gains the upper hand and soon learns that a contractor named Jesse Pardue is behind it all.
Turns out Quinn has been kidnapped by Jesse and Rona. After taking hallucinogens to calm her anger after an argument with her wife, poor Quinn accidentally stumbles upon a construction crew hiding the bodies of migrant workers who have died in various accidents over the years. What a dark twist to this episode! While Colter and Reenie are trying to find her, she is tied up at another one of Jesse’s construction sites and tries to bargain with him. She gives him money from her company and her personal bank account. But now that Jesse knows Colter has found her, time is running out and he decides he’d rather kill her and dump her body in the wood chipper.
The hostage situation escalates when Colter arrives on the scene, thanks to a quick internet search from the one and only Velma (Abby McEnany). At the last second, Rona turns on Jesse and shoots him so Quinn can escape unharmed. It works a little too well. He staggers back into the wood chipper, and we actually see his bloody remains come out the other end. Damn, CBS! That’s surprisingly brutal. But Quinn is safe, and Colter’s job is done.
On the personal front, Reenie brought a chaperone to the company summit. Thank God. If Colter is going to have romantic iron in the fire, she should, too. Reenie tells Colter that she’s been texting with an old co-worker named Elliott Rush (Michael Rady) and introduces the two of them. Their flirtation was evident in the days
