Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Tracker Season 2 Episode 19.
If you had “Reenie (Fiona Rene) almost dies because of her creepy client” on your Tracker Season 2 BINGO card, congrats! Even before Leonard Sharf (Pej Vahdat) showed his face on the CBS series, it was clear that he was going to cause trouble for Team Tracker’s favorite lawyer. The sh*t finally hits the fan in Episode 19, “Rules of the Game.” Thankfully, she has Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley) on her side, who’s willing to do more than the Federal Borough of Investigations to make sure she gets home safe.
Leo’s Assistant Goes Missing in ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 19

Colter rushes to Seattle to help Reenie and her mega-rich client Leo after his assistant Francie (Kaylah Zander), who we learned in Season 2, Episode 16, “The Mercy Seat,” is friends with Reenie’s boyfriend, Elliott (Michael Rady), vanishes from her hotel early in the morning. While Reenie and Leo brief Colter about an imminent company launch that might have made them some enemies, Leo gets an email with a hostage video of Francie attached. In the footage, she’s holding a cardboard sign that says “greed” and says that whoever took her wants five million dollars in under an hour. The rules are simple: no cops and no trying to find her. Just wire the money, or Francie dies. Almost half an hour later, they still aren’t able to get Leo’s banks to transfer that amount immediately.
So, meanwhile, Bobby (Eric Graise) does his thing and locates Francie himself using the video’s IP address. Getting there is going to be tight, so Colter hits the road and steps on the gas. When Colter arrives at the location, however, he finds the chair Francie was tied to empty. All that’s left is the “greed” sign with “you broke the rules” written on the other side. There’s also what appears to be a blood splatter on the wall and a bullet casing on the floor. Colter’s not buying it, however. There’s enough to indicate that she’s still alive.
Reenie thinks that the kidnapper might be Sheldon Grimes, the guy Leo asked her to get dirt on in “The Mercy Seat” so that he could force him out of the company they were going to launch together. Colter goes to Grimes’ home and his boat, however, and finds nothing more than some information about Reenie. Does this mean that she might be the next target?
Reenie Gets Caught in the Crossfire in ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 19

Image via CBS

She wants to delay the launch, because if word gets out about the kidnapping or how they blackmailed Grimes it would reflect poorly on all of them, herself included. Leo’s stubborn about it, so she instead confides in Elliott en route to secure a flash drive from the company’s office. Reenie feels guilty about her role in all of this. If she hadn’t asked Leo for a helicopter to rescue Colter in “The Mercy Seat,” she wouldn’t have owed him a favor. If she hadn’t owed him a favor, she wouldn’t have dug so deep into Grimes’ personal life to force him out of the company. And if she hadn’t basically blackmailed Grimes, Francie wouldn’t have gotten kidnapped… or so she thinks!
Unfortunately, a man in a ski mask is waiting for them at the office–much worse than a PR disaster! He swiftly shoots Elliott and kidnaps Reenie. She’s clearly had some kind of hostage training. She’s doing everything right: screaming, making a fuss, and keeping the masked men talking. When they leave, she discovers that she isn’t the only one tied up. It’s not Elliott, however. It’s Grimes! He’s not the kidnapper after all. Grimes thinks that Leo is the one behind this, claiming that he was a contingency plan for everything and isn’t who Reenie thinks. (He must have seen Thunderbolts* before he got kidnapped if he thought his old boss was trying to clean out his company by killing off any and all loose ends.) Before we can learn more from Grimes, however, one of the men gets the order to kill him.

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With multiple hostages and disappearances, this is now a case for the FBI, and a grumpy Special Agent Moss, played by Dollhouse and Battlestar Galactica alum Tahmoh Penikett, takes over the investigation. He kindly asks Colter to step down and stop looking for Reenie and Francie, which he obviously does not do. Colter and Bobby brainstorm quickly and figure out that Reenie has a smart ring for sleep tracking that they can use to track her location. When Colter arrives at the place where the smart ring pinged, however, he finds the ring in the back of a van and Francie alive in an overturned dumpster nearby. That’s odd. (And did Agent Moss thank him for doing his job? Doubt it…)
After getting Francie to safety, Colter gets back on the phone with Bobby. He’s been looking into anyone who might want to get revenge on Leo for any reason. One of them, Cyrus Berzatte, died by suicide after Leo allegedly stole credit for an algorithm. Cyrus has a little sister named Francine, who–you guessed it! It’s Francie, who orchestrated the whole thing. While Colter and Bobby work on finding where Francie’s guys are holding Reenie, Francie herself shows up at Leo’s place and pulls a gun on him. She even tells him that she has a plan in place to frame Grimes. Special Agent Moss arrives in time to rescue Leo and arrest Francie, while Colter returns to the scene where he found Francie and follows some henchmen right to Reenie seconds before they kill her too. (See! This is why Colter can’t ever follow orders and stop trying to find people when the authorities want him to–they can’t be in two places at once! They only care about Leo. Reenie would have died if Colter wasn’t looking for her.)
Reenie visits Colter in his van the next day to check in with him and thank him for saving her life. Emotions are high, though nothing overtly romantic happens between them. The first thing Reenie asked Colter about when he freed her was about her boyfriend, Elliott. But then, in the van, when Colter insists that she would have done the same thing for him, she starts to cry. Ahhhh! Colter’s also skeptical of Leo’s code of ethics, even though Reenie insists on seeing the good in him, or at least the complexity. (“I don’t condone what Francie did,” Colter says, “but I certainly understand her more than I understand Sharf.”) But Reenie’s choice of client is a conflict for another day.
Colter’s Sister Drops a Box in ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 19

Image via CBS

Let’s back up quickly, because the penultimate episode of Tracker Season 2 had bookmarks teasing what’s to come in the finale. At the beginning of the episode, Colter visited his younger sister Dory (Melissa Roxburgh) in between the classes she teaches. She gives him the infamous box of their dad’s things that Colter and Dory’s childhood friend Lizzy (Jennifer Morrison) gave to her at the end of Season 1. Lizzy got it from her mom, who was having an affair with the family patriarch, Ashton Shaw. This box has been on a journey! Colter seems convinced that something in the box, which contains a lot of research, is connected to how and why he died.
Then, at the end of the episode, after the aforementioned weighted moment or two with Reenie, Colter finally works up the courage to open the box. Inside is more or less what Dory described: lots of papers, a whittled animal, some rocks, and notebooks full of scribbling. Hidden inside the spine of one of those notebooks, Colter finds a folded piece of paper with a phone number on it. He gives the number a ring, but it’s disconnected. Not the most exciting cliffhanger of all time, but here we are!
The Tracker Season 2 finale premieres Sunday on CBS.

Tracker

The situation with Reenie’s client finally gets critical in “Rules of the Game.”

Release Date

February 11, 2024

Network

CBS

Showrunner

Elwood Reid

Writers

Ben H. Winters, Hilary Weisman Graham

Justin Hartley

Colter Shaw

Pros & Cons

The stakes are high.
Tahmoh Penikett is an excellent addition. Please come back?
The bookends with Dory and the box keep things tied together.

Why can’t Leo just *be* evil? Sometimes bosses are evil!
The FBI should be better at finding people.