CBS’s Tracker season four, episode five heads to Atlanta, Georgia for the missing persons case of the week. A mom and her daughter have just finished painting a Welcome Home Daddy sign when the mom leaves her daughter in the bathroom to answer the phone. The dad returns home, happily yells out to Shaina and Ellie that he’s home, and is greeted with silence. It’s obvious there was some sort of tussle and he races upstairs, still calling their names.
The bathtub’s overflowing but no one is there.
(This is a recap of season four, episode five – “Need to Know” – and there are spoilers.)
Russell (Jensen Ackles) calls Colter (Justin Hartley), disguising his voice, and Colter gives him a rough time for not touching base in months. Russell claims he’s been surfing, but the view out the window and the sniper rifle confirm he’s nowhere close to the ocean and definitely not hanging 10.
It turns out the dad in Atlanta is a work colleague of Russell’s and needs help. But Colter needs to be incredibly discreet and keep everything off the record. Grant Valko’s wife and daughter were taken, and the kidnappers are demanding that he pull a report. Russell’s going to get to Atlanta as fast as possible, but he needs Colter to start work on this at once.
Colter arrives outside a building, deposits his phone in a designated area, but keeps his gun. Grant explains he was deployed for six months on a civilian contract and when he returned to Georgia, a man at the airport tried to pay him to retract his last After-Action Report (AAR). He arrived home and his family was missing. Grant received a call giving him 48 hours to get rid of the AAR or his wife and daughter will die.
The kidnappers sent a photo of his family to confirm they’re telling the truth. Cameras at his home never picked up anyone inside or right outside his house.
The AAR contains details on Grant’s last day as a scout sniper in Somalia, where he and his partner, John Hawthorne, were escorting medical supplies. A van exploded near them and Grant assumed it was an IED. He wrote up an AAR and thought nothing of it. Grant doesn’t think there was anything in it that was a red flag.
Colter wants Grant to buy him time to figure out where they’re keeping his family. Grant says he’ll start the retraction process while Colter begins hunting the kidnappers.
Colter heads to Grant’s home and searches for hidden bugs or cameras. He finds a camera in a light socket and calls Randy (Chris Lee), who immediately tells him not to talk. The camera’s super high tech, but Randy’s able to flood the house’s Wi-Fi to buy Colter time to look around without whoever’s watching the camera seeing him.
Colter walks around the house, describing what he sees, and finds Shaina’s phone. Scratch marks indicate Shaina fought her kidnappers. Colter follows paint drops outside and finds a blue handprint on a gate to the alley. He spots men working a few houses down and learns that a blue truck sped through the alley yesterday and almost hit them. One of them got a partial license plate and Randy runs it, narrowing down the possible matches to three. Of the three, one belongs to a fleet company and is the most likely match.
Randy sends Colter a pin to the utility van’s location and Colter heads there next. Colter spots the van and inside is a kid’s pin. Colter hears someone approaching but thankfully it’s just Russell.
Grant’s spotter, Hawthorne, lives in these apartments and has already retracted his AAR. Colter wonders if this is Hawthorne’s van and he’s the one who took Grant’s family. If Hawthorne took the money and Grant didn’t, it would be a problem for Hawthorne since there would be conflicting AARs.
As they’re talking, Hawthorne falls from an upper window and lands on a nearby car. They spot a man and split up to chase after him. The man leaps from a rooftop to a nearby building and Colter follows but doesn’t quite make it. He’s dangling from the roof and Russell runs to help. Fortunately, Colter manages to pull himself up before Russell gets there.
The man’s gone and they believe he’s a professional killer, probably ex-military. Russell’s also found out Grant was escorting a proprietary weapon, not medical supplies. Grant probably had no idea. The owners need the report retracted because the weapon malfunctioned, meaning an IED didn’t cause the explosion like Grant assumed.
Russell and Colter need to figure out who’s financing all of this. Colter thinks first they need to get Grant’s family back; these people are going to kill them and Grant even if Grant retracts the AAR. He’s going to have Randy look at Hawthorne’s financials to see if they can trace the money.
Meanwhile, Grant’s meeting with a supervisor to retract his statement is not going well. He hangs up on Russell when he calls during the meeting and then again asks his superior to pull the form to start the retraction.
Randy finds out Hawthorne had a pending $100,000 wire transfer that didn’t go through. The money traces back to an LLC owned by Gordon Marsh, who is a bigwig at Rosskelly Defense Systems. Russell knows Rosskelly and they have a rep for heavily investing in weapons research. “Any kind of a blip, that could cost them billions overnight,” says Russell, which explains why they want the AAR retracted.
Colter thinks they don’t have time for a plan and wants to confront Gordon Marsh, even though it’ll put his life at risk.
Grant receives Russell’s text messages to not sign the retraction. He needs to stall.
Grant heads to the restroom, where a co-worker asks about his family and then admits he’s there to make sure Grant signs the retraction. Grant attacks him and it’s a brutal fight between two incredibly powerful men.
Colter steals a key card and makes his way up to Gordon’s office at Rosskelly while Russell goes to Grant’s location. Grant’s boss tells Russell that Grant went to the restroom, and Russell finds Grant there along with the unconscious man. Russell informs Grant that the man was sent to kill him as soon as he signed the retraction.
Colter holds Gordon at gunpoint and demands to know where Grant’s family is being held. Gordon reveals they’re holding the family at a ranch that’s normally empty. However, Gordon claims that even if Colter takes him there, they’ll both wind up dead. He’s just a numbers guy and they won’t mind killing him. Colter doesn’t care.
Colter and Gordon enter an elevator and a couple of floors down, they’re joined by two men. Gordon decides to be stupid and yells, “He’s got a gun.” Colter knocks out both men.
He calls Randy while Gordon’s driving to the ranch and has him delete the security footage from the elevator. Gordon claims they did what they had to do and that he hired the kill team to kill Hawthorne, Grant, and Grant’s family. The weapons system would be worth a few collateral deaths.
Grant and Russell get the unconscious man into the car’s trunk and return a text on his phone asking if it was done yet. They meet up with Gordon and Colter at the ranch, and Grant’s ready to kill Gordon. Russell urges him to remain calm until they can retrieve his wife and daughter.
They look over an aerial view of the ranch and try to narrow down where the family is being held. They can expect to encounter armed mercenaries standing guard. Colter and Russell want Grant to take up a sniper position on a ridge while they retrieve his family.
Gordon’s driving so the guard clears the vehicle to enter the property. Two guards approach as soon as they pull up and park. Russell and Colter knock them out and then Russell knocks out Gordon before they take off to search the outbuildings.
Unfortunately, the man who killed Hawthorne gets the drop on Grant in his sniper position.
Colter and Russell engage two more guards outside the barn where the family’s being held. Russell shoots another guard as Colter’s cutting the family free. They make it outside just as the man shows up holding Grant at gunpoint. Russell accompanies the family to the car, killing another guard while Colter confronts the mercenary holding Grant.
Russell is in position behind the action and fires two shots in the air. Grant ducks, while the mercenary turns, giving Colter a clear shot to take him out.
A short while later, EMTs and the police arrive and place Gordon under arrest. Grant’s family thanks Colter for saving them, and Grant says he has no idea how he’ll ever repay him.
Russell also says he owes his bro one, just as Reenie (Fiona Rene) calls with news that she’s filled the FBI and DCIS in on everything. Gordon Marsh and his Rosskelly associates will be held accountable, and Grant has been cleared of wrongdoing. Russell wonders about the guy in his trunk but then says he’ll figure it out.
Russell’s going to stick around and he and Reenie set up a date for next week. He’s also got time to grab real beers – not Colter’s trailer beers – at a real bar with real waitresses and appetizers.
