Smoke Before Morning by Brea Holden

"The fire that burns the forest also reads it." But what happens when the fire is used as a weapon to erase the truth?

Meteorologist Mina Holt has spent her life reading the sky. When her aunt, a veteran fire lookout, leaves a cryptic message about early smoke and vanishes, Mina hikes to the remote Granite Peak tower to find answers. Instead, she finds a ransacked cab, disconnected equipment, and a hidden logbook containing a highly complex cipher.

Enter Rafe Calder, a hotshot superintendent sent to the tower to investigate a routine, unconfirmed smoke report. But when he discovers the tower's steel stairs have been fatally sabotaged, trapping them sixty feet in the air, the terrifying reality sets in: they are not alone on the mountain. And the wildfire rapidly closing in on their position is no accident.

With their radio jammed and the flames roaring closer, Mina and Rafe must decipher three years of coded evidence proving a devastating, multi-million-dollar arson conspiracy. Someone has been burning the Payette National Forest for profit, and they will stop at nothing to ensure the evidence goes up in smoke. Forced to rely on each other in a deadly game of survival, Mina and Rafe must find a way off the mountain before the inferno buries the truth—and them—in ash.