Biohacking, baseball, and the opioid crisis combine in Sunday’s third episode of Tracker Season 2, “Bloodlines.” The episode features the second contentious reunion of the season so far for Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley), hot off the heels of Jensen Ackles’ return to the CBS series last week. Hartley’s real-life wife Sofia Pernas returns in this episode of Tracker as Colter’s rival rewardist Billie Matalon.

Colter’s New Job Has a Surprising Source in ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 3

At the beginning of the episode, Colter meets up with Billie at a bar in Nebraska. She’s got a job for him as well as a surprising lore drop. Billie wants Colter’s help collecting the reward for a missing high school pitcher named Eric Dobbs (Tyler Lawrence Gray). That’s simple enough. So simple that Colter is dubious of Billie’s motive. She eventually admits that the reason she’s willing to put aside their differences is because this small town happens to be where she grew up. She didn’t leave under great circumstances, and therefore the locals might be more willing to talk to Colter. (He thought his nemesis was from Miami.) However, he can’t resist a big mystery and an even bigger reward — $50,000 split between them — and therefore agrees to team up. She’ll provide insider knowledge about the town, and he’ll be the one showing his face around the families that have a grudge against hers.

It’s fun to see Hartley and Pernas’ characters spar with each other, knowing that the actors are married in real life. But oddly enough, their chemistry doesn’t really translate to the screen. That sometimes happens with real couples. They’re almost too familiar with each other and the sparks go undetected. For the relationship they have on the show, however, that’s probably for the best. Colter Shaw doesn’t need any more will-they-won’t-they situations.

‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 3 Introduces a Creepy Organization

Last week it was aliens, this week… vampires? The discovery that Colter and Billie make in this episode is like something out of a True Blood subplot as Colter goes snooping around Eric Dobbs’ family. There, he finds out that Eric’s parents did not approve of his older girlfriend, Ashley. He also finds a wad of cash and some prescription pills. However, after talking to Eric’s coach and one of his teammates, Colter feels confident that the kid was not addicted. So next, Bobby helps Colter and Billie track Ashley’s cell phone to a field near some abandoned train cars – a local teenage make-out spot, according to Billie. Inside one of the cars, they find a lot of blood and a trail that leads to Ashley’s barely conscious body.

Since the police now have to get involved, Colter meets the investigating officer and one of Billie’s old classmates, Detective Penny Bullard (Khalilah Joy). While showing the begrudging detective around her own crime scene, Colter discovers an empty blood donation bag. But since Eric is now a suspect in Ashley’s assault, Colter is on his own. Detective Bullard is only half-convinced by his theory that there was a third person in the train car with Ashley and, allegedly, Eric, but the large amount of blood is curious. As the detective sends a sample of the blood to the lab, Colter has Bobby (Eric Graise) track down the serial number on the blood bag.

Meanwhile, Billie runs into a local diner owner while getting information about Eric’s older girlfriend, Ashley. He’s very suggestive, seemingly after sexual favors in exchange for information. Billie literally twists his arm and gets him to reveal that Ashley was the one with the opioid addiction and was trying to save up $10,000 for rehab. The pieces start to fall together. Eric was donating blood so she could get help. But things still aren’t adding up completely. As Billie points out, the rate for plasma donations is between $50-75. It would take years for Eric to save up that kind of money.

Bobby tracks the serial number on the blood donation bag not to a hospital or Red Cross center, but to an office building for a company called Everlife. Billie and Tracker break in, and the vibes are immediately creepy. Hidden behind unused office space is a room filled with reclining chairs under LED lights, shelves of blood bags, and a teenage boy’s dead body in a container of silica beads. He’s not Eric, but he has been completely drained of blood. Colter and Bobby brainstorm and conclude that these are biohackers, anti-aging gurus who believe that they can “reverse the clock” with blood transfusions from young people. People like this would pay thousands of dollars for a few bags of a high school athlete’s blood. What has Eric gotten himself into, and who has him?

Billie Gets Captured in ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 3

Enter the college booster who posted the reward and has been unseen until midway through the episode, Shane Nile (Patrick Fabian). The second his face appears on-screen, it’s clear that he’s the villain of the week. He’s too rich. Too slick. Too tan and sporty. Shane has to be the proverbial “vampire” behind the biohacking scheme who took Eric. He asks questions about Ashley’s condition that are clearly — though not to Billie — angled toward whether she’s talked to the police.

Shane also pulls the reward and tries to send Billie off with a measly ten thousand dollars. He uses the university’s publicity concerns as an excuse, saying that they don’t want to be associated with a teenager who’s now a person of interest in the assault of a young woman. It’s clear that he is hoping this will all disappear–though not clear why he hired a rewardist in the first place. He almost gets away with it, too, because Billie is all too eager to quit a job that’s not paying her in a town that brings back bad memories and let the police handle it.

However, moments after Billie decides to leave town, a car crashes into her, and she wakes up in a basement. Kidnapped women are right up there with dead wives as lazy ways to motivate male protagonists, especially in 2024, but at least she found Eric in the process. Lucky for both of them, Colter does not share Billie’s (totally valid) professional boundaries and keeps searching for Eric. While talking to the police, he learns that Billie didn’t drop off the files she promised to before she left. So he starts looking for her too. Colter goes to check in with Shane, and quickly puts together that he’s the guy buying Eric’s blood and took charge of the school posting the reward so that he could get to him first.

One physical altercation with Shane’s beefy associate and brief hostage situation later, Colter rescues both Eric and Billie. At the end of the episode, Colter gets to toss a ball around with Eric and his dad after… so sweet! He also learns, like, two personal details about his nemesis and her own complicated childhood as the daughter of a con artist. They end the episode on a bonding but still platonic note before the rewardist life invariably takes them to new corners.

Tracker Season 2 airs on CBS on Sundays at 8:30 PM ET and next-day on Paramount+.