Jennifer Morrison returns to direct CBS’s Tracker season two episode six, which finds Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley) heading to the hills in Washington state to find missing campers. The campers – Sam, Cooper, and married couple Monica and Jason – are shown drunk and dancing in the moonlight as the episode “Trust Fall” begins.
Sam’s really wasted, and Monica suggests they jump in the waterfall to sober. Sam heads off to relieve himself as an unknown person with a rifle watches from the woods.
Velma (Abby McEnany) and Reenie (Fiona Rene) tell Colter that he was specifically requested to find the campers. Olivia Barnett, whose daughter ran off a couple of years ago, suggested that her friend Lauren contact Colter to help find her four friends. Lauren’s offering a $25,000 reward.
Colter and Lauren (Amanda Wong) meet at Lauren’s friends’ campsite. She came out to meet them this morning, and they were gone. All their supplies were still there, and food had been left out overnight. Plus, they left their phones behind. The authorities won’t help until they’ve been missing for 48 hours.
Monica sent her a drunk text last night saying they were going to hike under the blue moon. Colter finds medication in Monica’s tent and blood in Sam’s. He also notices a knife is missing from its sheath in Sam’s tent. Sam didn’t leave his phone behind, like the others, and Colter wonders if Sam might be dangerous. Lauren confirms Sam has a temper when he drinks.
Bobby (Eric Graise) investigates Sam’s background and discovers he has multiple drunk & disorderly charges. He even threatened a coworker and lost his job. Colter asks Bobby to look into the other missing campers while he picks up their trail in the woods. Suddenly, someone cries for help, and Colter rushes to Sam, whose leg is impaled on a branch.
While working on the wound, Colter learns Sam stepped away from camp and fell down a hill. He heard gunshots a few hours before dawn and claims not to know what happened to his three friends. Colter can’t remove the wood because it could cause more bleeding, so instead, he breaks it off and then bandages Sam’s leg.
Colter helps him walk, and Sam admits he was really drunk, must have passed out, and has a hangover. The two gunshots sounded like booms and were a few seconds apart. Colter deduces the shots came from a high-powered rifle at a long range. Sam says the blood in his tent is from a broken bottle from earlier in the night. He doesn’t know why the knife sheath is empty.
Colter delivers Sam to Lauren and suggests she get him to a hospital. The cops are on their way, but Colter isn’t going to wait. Instead, he heads off to find the waterfall Monica wanted to jump in. It’s a short hike and when he arrives, there’s a man with a handgun near the water. It turns out he’s a retired Tacoma cop named Keaton (Brent Sexton) who was looking around old access roads last night and heard the gunshots. It was a super blue moon last night, which only happens every few years. Keaton believes the gunshots from last night are related to an old cold case of his. There were two shooting victims a decade apart within five miles of this location. The same caliber bullet was used in both murders. Thus far, his only clue is that they happened during a super blue moon.
“I never thought it was random. Never could make the case, but here I am spending my time still looking for the guy,” says Keaton.
Colter invites Keaton to join him in searching the waterfall area, and almost immediately, Colter finds Monica’s backpack. There’s a bullet hole in the backpack, but no blood. They figure out the shooter’s direction and assume the campers ran in the opposite direction. Colter suggests they were being hunted.
Colter locates a bullet, and it’s the same caliber as Keaton’s cases. And just like in this shooting, the shooter fired the shots at a steep downward angle. Forensics determined the soil samples came from this waterfall area, but the bodies were found out in the woods.
Colter believes he’s found the spot above where the shooter fired from. It’s quite a hike, but Keaton keeps up. The spot lines up perfectly with the angle of the shot, and the trees would have kept the shooter concealed.
Keaton’s going to stay on this case until he finds the shooter. He’s determined to give the families some peace. Colter understands because he’s also got a case he couldn’t solve and a family waiting for answers. Keaton asks about it and Colter explains it happened 10 years ago. Gina finished her shift at the mall and vanished. He promised Gina’s sister he wouldn’t stop looking, and Keaton corrects him. He believes Colter made the promise to himself and is still looking because his words still mean something. Keaton praises Colter’s skills and admits he could have used a partner like him.
Colter finds another shell, and he and Keaton decide to take off since the shooter could be targeting them right now. They head through the woods and Colter spots an old shelter that’s the perfect place to hide. Colter sees an open can of food just as shots ring out. Keaton refuses to get down, returns fire, and gets shot in the arm. Fortunately, he also wounded the killer and insists that Colter go hunt him down.
Colter uses trees for cover as he and the shooter exchange gunfire. The injured shooter tries to run, but Colter has the upper hand. He orders the murderer to drop his weapon, but he refuses. Fortunately, Keaton comes up from behind and presses his gun to the man’s head. Realizing he has no other option, the killer tosses his rifle on the ground.
The cops arrive and Colter learns the shooter is Marcus Wilson. Keaton describes him as having a high IQ with psychopathic tendencies. The cop says Marcus believes the mountains belong to him, which piques Colter’s interest.
Marcus admits he shot at the campers but didn’t hit them. Colter gets him to reveal that he thought about killing them, but “they were hellbent on killing each other.” Marcus saw Monica and Jason holding a knife on Cooper while he begged for his life. Coop’s hands were tied when they marched him off into the woods. Marcus fired two shots at them as they were walking away toward an exit trail.
Colter realizes the campers made it off the mountain and heads to the hospital to see Sam and Lauren. Lauren’s shocked by what Marcus saw, but Sam feels something screwy is happening. The doctor ran a tox screen, and he had unusually high anxiety meds in his system. Sam doesn’t take anxiety meds, but Colter knows Monica does since he found the bottle in her tent.
Colter believes Monica and Jason didn’t want Sam to go on the hike. They were after Coop and didn’t want Sam in the way.
The scene switches to Coop driving while Jason holds a knife at his throat. Apparently, they did something horrible eight years ago and Coop doesn’t want to keep it a secret any longer. He wanted to talk to them about it and set something up so that if he died, the secret would still come out.
Colter calls Bobby with an update, and Bobby reports that Cooper’s been paying a woman named Natalie Perry in Seattle every month, even though he can barely pay his bills. However, he’s been doing it via a dummy company so that Natalie can’t trace the payments back to him.
Keaton’s unsolved murders are solved, so he returns the favor by helping Colter. Reenie’s in Seattle speaking with a new client, so Colter asks her to visit Natalie. Keaton offers to go with Colter to see if Cooper, Monica, or Jason have made it home.
Natalie, a single mom, doesn’t know where the money comes from. She doesn’t recognize the name James Cooper. Reenie asks about the man in a photo, and learn it’s her husband, Brian. It’s assumed he died eight years ago from a hit-and-run accident while he was out jogging. The police never found his body, but there was broken glass a few streets over along with blood on the road. One of his shoes was found in a bush.
Someone might have hit him and then took the body. Natalie recalls that callers on the tip line said they saw drunk college kids driving erratically around that same time. The cops had little to go on, so it’s still an open case.
Reenie calls Colter with the info and it’s easy to tie Cooper’s payments to Brian’s death. Keaton and Colter believe Jason and Monica were in the car with Cooper and all agreed to keep it a secret. Cooper sent payments as penance. Colter and Reenie think Cooper was going to come clean and take Jason and Monica down with him.
Meanwhile, Jason watches Cooper as Monica attempts to get into his laptop. Cooper won’t give her his password and reminds them it doesn’t matter what they do to him. He has an email set to go out tomorrow morning to the cops. Jason can’t believe Cooper’s ready to ruin their lives; it won’t bring Brian back.
Cooper confesses he can’t live with it anymore after seeing Natalie in a sporting goods store buying her son a fishing rod. Coop feels guilty that Brian’s not with his son buying the fishing gear because of them.
Monica gets into Cooper’s laptop and finds the email. Cooper was going to tell the cops everything, including that Jason was driving and hit Brian. The email also includes a map of where Brian’s body was dumped.
Cooper makes a run for it, and Jason tries to stop him. Coop accidentally stabs Jason in the chest. Monica reacts by hitting Cooper in the head with a kettlebell.
Colter and Keaton arrive minutes later and find Jason’s still-warm dead body. Keaton calls the cops as Colter spots the open email confession on Cooper’s laptop. The kettlebell’s on the floor and Colter figures out Monica killed Cooper after Cooper killed Jason. She took off with Coop’s body and forgot to delete the email. Colter believes Monica is taking Coop to the same place where they dumped Brian.
It’s pitch dark when Monica drags Coop toward a lake. Coop coughs and begs for his life. Monica is about to finish Coop off when Colter yells at her to put down her knife. Keaton and Colter advance, guns drawn. Colter reminds Monica to think of her kids and not kill Coop. She allows Colter to take the knife from her hand.
Lauren and Sam rush to the scene, and Coop confirms he’s ready to tell the truth. He’s just sorry he didn’t confess sooner. Lauren hands over the $25,000 reward, even though this isn’t an outcome anyone expected.
Keaton and Colter have a final heart-to-heart, and it’s obvious they have built a deep respect between them in a short period of time. Colter asks if Keaton would mind helping him with Gina Picket’s cold case, and Keaton agrees. “I’ll poke around, put some old-school legwork into it,” says Keaton.
Later, Reenie gives Colter a hard time about screwing up her meeting with a potential new client. Colter apologizes and Reenie lets him off the hook. She landed the client and even brought some bubbly to celebrate!
Colter tells Reenie he’s proud of her. They toast to her going out on her own.
- Tracker Season 2 Episode 1 “Out of the Past” Recap
- Tracker Season 2 Episode 2 “Ontological Shock” Recap
- Tracker Season 2 Episode 3 “Bloodlines” Recap
- Tracker Season 2 Episode 4 “Noble Rot” Recap
- Tracker Season 2 Episode 5 “Preternatural” Recap
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