The Honey Trap
Copyright© 2026 by Komiko Yakamura
Chapter 11
The water agreement was signed on a Wednesday in the council building with both lawyers present and Thomas Many Guns as witness and Wallace Rides Horse notably absent, which her father noted without commenting on and which she noted without commenting on and which David noticed and had the good sense to leave alone.
The lawyers shook hands and gathered their copies and left, and Thomas witnessed the signatures and then stood and put on his hat and looked at David with the particular look of a seventy-year-old man who has seen enough to know what things are worth.
“Your grandfather would have signed this in 1987,” Thomas said. “If someone had asked him to.”
“I know it,” David said.
“Your father wouldn’t have signed it in 1987 or any year after.”
“I know that too.”
Thomas put out his hand and David shook it and Thomas left without further ceremony, which was Thomas’s way of indicating approval.
Her father walked the lawyers out and she and David were alone in the council room with the signed documents on the table and the whiteboard still in the corner from the first meeting and the coffee pot on the counter that had been sitting since morning.
“Done,” she said.
“Done.” He looked at the documents. “Raymond starts in three weeks.”
“I’ll be on site.”
“I know you will.” He looked at her across the table. “Have dinner with me Friday. Not a site walk. Not a pretext. Just dinner.”
She looked at him. “At the ranch?”
“In Billings. There’s a place on Montana Avenue. Good food, not a production.”
She thought about Billings, which was two hours each way, which was a different category of thing than the ranch and the creek bank and her father’s kitchen. More visible. More declared.
“All right,” she said.
He nodded like it was settled and picked up his copy of the agreement and put it in the folder he’d brought and that was that.
Wallace called her Thursday morning.
She was in her truck on the way to the tribal office and she almost didn’t pick up and then picked up because not picking up was its own statement.
“The agreement is signed,” she said before he could open.
“I know the agreement is signed.” His voice had the particular texture it got when he was composing himself over something he felt strongly. “I want to talk about what comes after it.”
“What comes after it is the grade control structure and the creek restoration.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”
She drove and let him have the silence.
“You’re spending time on Branson land,” he said.
“I’m overseeing a restoration project.”
“Alachooshe.” He said her name the way her father did, to mark the weight of what followed, but where her father used it as a door Wallace used it as a wall. “Your father may be comfortable with this situation. The council is not uniform on it.”
“The council’s position on my personal life is not a council matter.”
“When the chief’s daughter is in a relationship with the rancher whose water agreement we just negotiated, it becomes a council matter. You know how this looks.”
“It looks like two people who met during a negotiation and found they had reason to know each other further.” She kept her voice even. “The agreement is signed. The terms are fair. Whatever I do after that signing is my own business.”
“People are talking.”
“People always talk.”
“Your father’s position—”
“My father is aware of the situation and has met David Branson and has formed his own view.” She pulled into the tribal office lot and stopped the truck. “Wallace. I hear what you’re saying and I understand why you’re saying it. But I need you to understand that my personal decisions are mine to make and I’ll make them the same way I make everything else, carefully and with full knowledge of the consequences.”
A long pause. “And if the consequences affect the tribe?”
“Then I’ll address them when they arise. Not before.” She turned off the engine. “Is there anything else?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Just be careful,” he said, and hung up, and she sat in the parking lot and looked at the tribal office building and thought about Wallace, who was not a bad man and not wrong about everything and who was going to make the next several months more complicated than they needed to be.
She went inside and did her work.
Friday she drove to Billings.
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