Some fires are lit by lightning.
Some are lit by someone who doesn't want to be seen.

Nollan has been drawing the wrong things all summer.

Not wrong because they aren't real — wrong because no one else seems to notice them. The drought-cracked slopes. The dead material piling four inches thick against the rocks. The smoke drifting in exactly the wrong direction. Nollan doesn't plan to document a crime. He just draws what looks wrong. By the time he understands what his sketchbook has been telling him, the fire is already in the fuel channels.

Across the lake, Reid Calloway has six months of thermal anomaly data and no system built to handle what it means. She's been logging it correctly. She just hasn't found the right person to show it to.

Until now.

When the camp radio goes silent — one small component missing, deliberately removed — Nollan, Felix, and Toby are cut off from help with a wildfire closing in. Their only option is the signal no one can sabotage: Morse code, a hollow log, and Toby's gift for hearing things others miss.

Four hundred and thirty meters across dark water.
Through smoke. Into the unknown.

The signal was enough. But only because someone sent it — and someone was listening.

The Signal That Carried is the second book in The Badges of Timber Creek — a middle-grade adventure series about three boys who see what others overlook, and a girl across the lake who measures everything. For readers ages 9-13 who love wilderness survival, close friendship, and mystery you solve by paying attention.

Series reading order:
Book 1: The Fox-Tail Badge
Book 2: The Signal That Carried
Book 3: Coming Soon