A/N: This is the other story that I have wanted to rewrite for Samcedes since forever. I wanted to make sure that everyone know that this is not my idea or even mostly my words. I am just rewriting Linda Howard's book Open Season and putting a Glee twist on it. I don't own anything in this tale. But I must warn you that it involves human trafficking and has triggers of date rape via drug use and many other gruesome things. So, please keep this in mind when reading this tale.

Prologue

Santana nervously clutched her bag that held some water and a small package of food she had been able to steal for the trip up North. With all this talk of building walls to separate Mexico from the United States, she figured this would be the time to cross the border. David Martinez had told her that they wouldn't be able to stop to eat or drink or have bathroom breaks until they reached Las Vegas. She was locked in a blue trunk covered with items with tiny microscopic holes bored in so that she could breath. The cramp space was hot and made movement almost impossible. Because of the movement of the vehicle knocking the trunk around, she wasn't still long enough to try to sleep the entire trip.

Santana was scared but she had no choice. Her family had come from Puerto Rico to vacation in Mexico, and due to a car accident, she was left in the country stranded with no way of getting home because the Mexican authorities offered her no help because she had no money. She was a fifteen year old who had lived an easy life with parents who provided her every need. She didn't need to know the names of the family's attorney or how to get money out of their accounts. For all she knew none of her extended family knew of the accident or even knew she was alive. The police gave her one phone call and when she called her abuela, no one answered the phone.

She was living on the streets of Mexico making a way the best that she knew how which was by stealing from tourists. She listened to the other girls telling of ways that some of their friends had left the country. At the time, she was willing to do anything to leave the streets of Mexico, so she decided to go with them to meet David Martinez an American who helped girls, who wanted to live a better life, leave the country and enter into the United States.

Santana knew that once she got to America, she could get to the embassy or go to the police and ask for help to getting back home to Puerto Rico. She was legally entitled to enter the country; she just didn't have her passport or any identification. The accident that she was in caused her to be thrown from the car before the car burst into flames burning all her luggage and personal possessions. She was sure that the American police would allow her to use a telephone, and her relatives in Puerto Rico would be able to send for her, and she would be able to go home and properly grieve the loss of her parents and her younger brother.

Santana tried to use these thoughts to distract her as she was moved from one vehicle to the next and then finally when she heard the English language, she knew she had made it to America. David Martinez had not let her down. As the trunk was opened, she was surprised to see that she was not the only female who had made it across the border illegally. There were at least three other girls, and they were rounded up and put on the back of a semi truck for the next part of their journey.

After riding in the vehicle all night long, she could hear a girl say in Spanish that she needed to use the bathroom in a voice filled with shame. Santana told the girl in Spanish that she needed to go, too. Santana could literally feel her bladder about to explode in pain. She was trying to ignore it knowing that she would soon be safe in police custody, but when she saw tears roll down the girl's face as she told them she couldn't hold back her water, Santana was moved with compassion.

Santana looked at the older girls who looked as powerless as the little girl, so she decided to make the decision. "We must all do what we have to do." She said as she designated an area in the truck for them to pee in.

"What if we have to do the other?" One of the other girls ask after they took turns relieving themselves.

"Hopefully, we will stop before then." It was summer and hot in the back of the truck. And the idea of smelling that was something that made bile rise up in the back of Santana's throat.

The girls began to talk among themselves saying how they agreed to pay David Martinez money for this opportunity to be brought into the United States. Santana realized she was lucky because she hadn't any money to pay him, and he agreed to help her for free. Maybe it was because she was pretty that he had made an exception for her.

It seemed as if the trip to Las Vegas would never end. Santana realized that she had brought a little food and water, and she couldn't eat without sharing with the other girls, so she divided up her rations allowing them one sip of water from her bottle. She knew how thirsty the girls were, so she added, "If any of you take more than one small sip before passing the bottle, I will slap the hell out of you."

Under her dark fierce piercing gaze, each girl did what Santana said. By organizing them and deciding where they could relieve themselves and giving them water, Santana had become their unofficial leader. Santana allowed the girls to take two sips a piece before taking back the bottle. She didn't know how much longer they had in the truck, and she didn't want to use up all of the water so soon.

After what felt like forever the truck pulled off of the highway and stopped. The engine was still running when they heard David Martinez get out. Santana quickly gathered her meager belongings thinking that surely they were in Las Vegas by now.

"This is as far I will take you." David announced. "The truck is too hot for you, and you all could die. My good friend Puck will take you all the rest of the way. His truck has air-conditioning."

Santana looked over at the man named Puck. He was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt carrying four bottles of water. The girls eagerly accepted and drank the water while David talked to Puck in English which only Santana spoke.

"You all must do exactly what Puck says or you may be deported right back to Mexico. He understands a little of our language. So, if you need something. Let him know."

All of the girls nodded in agreement and got into the camper shell of Puck's large white pickup truck. There were sleeping bags and a small stool with a hole on top that served as a toilet. There was no room to stand, so they had to lie down or sit. The cold air and the music coming from the truck's speakers was soothing, and the girls endured the trip to Las Vegas for two more days.

Noah stopped and fed the girls regularly and gave them water to drink, but they were unable to wash and all of them smelled horribly. Sometimes Puck would stop in the middle of desert to air the camper out, but their body order made it impossible to smell fresh for any length of time.

When they passed the desert, Santana could see civilization with cars, people, and buildings. She didn't know if they were in Vegas or not, but she asked Puck to see if they had finally made it. He told her they were still a long way from Vegas, but they were in Memphis. After another couple of days on the road, they finally stopped in Lima, Ohio, and Puck allowed them to get out of the truck and enter a trailer which he had unlocked.

The mobile home was big with a lot of furniture and a nice size kitchen and two bathrooms that they could take turns taking a bath. He gave them all a loose short dress to wear that he said they could keep. They were amazed at his kindness. Not only did he supply them with clothes, but he gave them toothbrushes and toothpaste to brush their teeth and shampoo and conditioner for their hair.

After getting cleaned, Santana felt as if she was human again. Although he had given her the dress, he hadn't given her any underwear, and she felt slightly self-conscious parading around without underwear. While the other girls were sleeping in twin beds in two rooms, she went out to ask Puck if he would take her to the Embassy or a police station, so she could be able to return home to Puerto Rico.

Puck told her the trailer didn't have a landline phone, and his cell phone didn't pick up reception in the area. He promised to take her to town the next day, so she could get in contact with the proper authorities. He offered her a Coke and while they were sitting down watching TV, she began to get sleepy. He offered her some peanuts which she loved and drank more Coca Cola to wash the salt of the nuts down. Santana could feel herself getting sleepier and sleepier.

When there was a loud noise on the TV, she would jerk awake but her neck muscles wouldn't work and instead of lifting her head, she felt herself sliding sideways. Then, Puck was there helping her to lie down on the sofa and stretching her legs. He was still touching her legs, and although she tried to tell him to stop, her tongue wouldn't work and she couldn't speak. Soon, he was touching her between her legs where no one had ever touched her. She so badly wanted to stop him, but darkness settled over her, and she thought no more.

Chapter One

"Mercy. Get your butt down here. Breakfast is ready!" Mercy's mom voice echoed up the stairwell, the same shrill voice she had been using ever since Mercy was in the first grade and had to be forced out of the bed.

Instead of getting up, Mercy Ann Jones remained in the bed listening to the sound of the steady rain pounding on the roof. It was the morning of her thirty-fourth birthday, and she just didn't want to get up. The dark and dreary day mirrored her mood. She was 34 years old, and there was nothing about this day which made her want to celebrate.

The rain wasn't even a thunderstorm, which she would enjoyed with the roll of the thunder and the flashes of lightning. Nah, it was just a steady pouring of rain gliding down her bedroom windows. Making her birthday feel like a heavy reminder of the fact that all her good days were behind her, and what had being good gotten her, absolutely nothing.

Mercy had to face the cold and terrifying facts. She was 34, had never been married or engaged. She had never had a hot love affair, just a brief relationship in college to prove to everyone that she wasn't gay. She lived with her widowed mother and aunt. The last time she had been on a date was on September 7, 2009, with her Aunt Joanna's Jewish best friend's nephew, Jacob-because he hadn't been on a date in his life. What a horrible date that had been. To her relief, he didn't even try to kiss her. It had been one of the worse evenings of her entire life.

If there was one word to describe Mercy's life, it would be uninteresting. Her clothes, her hair, her face, her entire existence was uninteresting. She was a 34 year old small town barely-been-kissed spinster librarian, and she might as well be 84 for all the action she was getting.

Mercy finally stopped looking outside at the rain and started to look up at the ceiling. She was still too depressed to get up and join her mom and Auntie Jo downstairs where they would sing Happy Birthday in perfect harmony, and she would have to smile and pretend to be excited about her big day. She looked at her alarm clock, and she knew she had to get up because she had to be to work by nine. She just didn't want to face the world yet.

Last night, she laid out her outfit that she would wear the next day a habit she had since she was in high school. She didn't have to look at the chair to see the navy skirt, white blouse, and sweater that resembled the majority of her old maid wardrobe.

Suddenly, she felt embarrassed by her own lack of style. A woman of her age should dress to impress at least on her birthday. She should have gone shopping for a birthday outfit. She couldn't even do something special with her makeup because the only makeup she owned was a single tube of lipstick that was a brownish color that was not too much different than her natural lip color. Most of the time she just used lip gloss and headed out the door. She didn't need makeup for her job and no date status, so she rarely bothered. Now as she was getting to closer to 35 and then the big four oh, she realized that had didn't even know how she got herself in this predicament.

These thoughts propelled Mercy out of the bed to look at herself in her dresser mirror. Her naturally curly hair was tied up in a silk scarf, so she took the scarf off to see her full image in the mirror.

She didn't like what she saw. She looked like a kid of twelve in her footie pajamas and the hairstyle she had at the same age. No hair fried, dyed, and laid to side and definitely no Victoria's Secret sexy nighties for her. She just looked ordinary.

Mercy knew why she was looking at herself critically in the mirror. She knew why she didn't want to get out of the bed on birthday, and it was all because of the tick tock on her internal biological clock. For the first time in her life, the research concerning women who had to save their eggs to increase their chances of motherhood at her age were getting to her. She wanted a baby and even a husband of her own, and she realized she was in big trouble.

Almost half of her life was over, and she was no closer to realizing the dreams she had since she was a little girl. Whenever someone asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she always said she wanted to be her mother. In Mercy's opinion as a child, her mother could do no wrong. She was a high school teacher, church soloist, great wife, and the best mother ever. When her little sister Jane was born, Mercy would emulate her mother and take care of her little sister and play house with her pretending to be her sister's mother or play school with her and pretend to be her sister's teacher.

Not only did Mercy want children, she could adopt or foster if that was the case or even get a sperm donor. She wanted SEX. Not just fumbling in the dark with any man or paying for it from a prostitute. She wanted hot, sweaty, grunting, rolling-around naked in the middle of the afternoon sex. She wanted her fabulous breasts and booty to be used for something more than flesh in her underwear. She looked really good naked, and it was a shame that she was the only one to ever see and appreciate her curves.

Because Mercy developed curves at a young age, her father had made sure her mother bought clothes that disguised Mercy's shape. Her father didn't like the fact that at the age of nine, his daughter was getting stares from the older men in their church's congregation. So, he made sure that her mother bought clothes that were always loose and baggy on Mercy. During the 1990s, saggy and baggy clothes were in style, so Mercy was never picked on in school. But when she went to college, styles suddenly changed, and she always had a belly, so she couldn't wear the bare midriffs, or skin tight clothing that her peers were wearing.

It was hard to attract male attention in college because she still dressed as she did when she was in high school. When she graduated from graduate school getting her masters in library science and becoming a librarian instead of a teacher, she knew what was expected in her job's dress code. In order for people to take her seriously, she had to dress the part of the traditional stern librarian who shushed everyone. Her mother took her shopping from the same stores she bought her school teacher wardrobe from, and Mercy had been dressing like a middle aged woman for the remainder of her life.

After bemoaning her state in life, Mercy realized that the good Lord helps those who help themselves, and if she wanted change in her life, then she had to be an agent of that change. Desperation sparked inspiration and inspiration gave her the revelation that she had to stop being the good, dependable girl.

Her pulsed raced, and she could feel her heart beating through her chest as she began to breathe rapidly. Surely, the Lord didn't have that in mind, when He decided to give her the inspiration to do this on her own. Not only was this very unChristian-like, but she didn't know how to be a bad girl. Her father had been the music minister of their church and on the City Council. She was reared in a strict household with demands that she never said or did anything to cause her family embarrassment. She had been the good girl her entire life. How was she suddenly going to become a bad girl?

In her mother's and aunt's opinion, bad girls smoked weed, got drunk, danced in clubs, and slept around with so many men that they didn't know who their babies' fathers were. She might be able to handle the dancing, she really liked that idea, but smoking was out, and she didn't like alcohol enough to get more than tipsy, and as for sleeping around with any Tom, Dick, or Harry, that was completely out of the question. She wasn't about to endanger her health by being an easy lay.

Her subconscious balked at her judgmental ideas. 'Bad girls get all the men!' She watched reality television, and the more ratchet a girl's behavior was, the more more popular she was with men. Some even had husbands who seemed to like the fact that their wives were proverbial bad girls.

Common sense told her that she was being too linear in thinking. There were plenty of good girls who had managed to marry and have kids. All of her friends, and even her younger sister Jane were good girls who were married and had kids of their own. It could be done. Unfortunately for her, it seemed that the men who were attracted to good girls were all taken. So, what kind of man was left? Men who were attracted to bad girls, that's what.

But, did she even want a man who was attracted to bad girls. Was she that desperate? Her hormones wailed hell yeah! She wanted sex, marriage, and babies, and she was willing to lower her standards to find a man willing to give her these three things, but she wasn't willing to be with a man who spent more time in clubs, than he did at work or at home. She didn't want a man who would sleep with anyone who had a hole.

She didn't want a saint or even a man with minimal experience like herself. She didn't mind a man with swagger and confidence. He didn't have to be handsome, but he had to have that look in his eyes that he knew how to give a girl a good time. She didn't care if he was a pharmacist, fireman, or postal worker. Surely there could still be good men who wanted to settle down and be faithful to a woman who was willing to be faithful to him.

Even though she wanted to be a bad girl and attract all the types of men who were still single, she realized that she couldn't quite become a member of the bad girl's club. She had a job and her family had a reputation that she wasn't willing to besmirch just because she wanted to be all booed up.

Maybe she could be a party girl like those celebutantes. Someone who dressed fashionably, laughed, and had fun. Someone who wore short skirts and flirted and danced with men. Maybe she could do that. A big maybe...

"Mercy!" Her mother yelled again. This time Mercy knew that her mother's voice meant business. And she continued to yell, "you're going to be late!"

Mercy had never been late to work a day in her life. In fact, she was always early. Couldn't she be late once in her career? Her unblemished record at the library was just one more piece of proof of how much a goody goody she was.

Now she was a librarian a researcher by trade. Surely, she could figure out how to improve her appearance and become a woman that men would find fascinating. She needed a list. A list of things to improve to turn her into a woman who looked like a party girl. The first thing she needed to change was her hairstyle. The second thing she needed was makeup, and last but not least she needed new clothes. There, she thought feeling pleased with herself. She had a blueprint for the making of the new and improved Mercy Ann Jones.

After making her list, she went to the bathroom and began to get ready for her work day. After making sure she was clean, smelling good, and lotioned. She put on her old clothes and lipstick and headed downstairs for breakfast.

When she got to the kitchen, she saw two wrapped presents sitting on the kitchen table. Her mom had made her favorite breakfast, chocolate chip pancakes and bacon with a cup of cappuccino steaming beside her plate. The steaming cup meant her mom had been listening for her steps on the stairwell before pouring the cup and setting out the meal to make sure it was hot and not lukewarm. Tears welled up in her eyes when she thought about how much her mother and aunt loved her and she loved them dearly in return.

"Happy birthday!" They both said and begin to sing to her looking at her with love in their eyes.

"Thank you," she said managing a smile and because they urged her to, she quickly went to opening her gifts. The first was a pretty robe from her mother, and Mercy was grateful it wasn't what she got last year which was a book.

"I thought you might want something pretty." Her mother said before Aunt Jo pushed the other box towards Mercy.

"Hurry up, or your breakfast will get cold." Her aunt told her as Mercy began to slowly unwrap her next gift.

"Thanks Mom, it is pretty." Mercy told her mom as she opened her gift from her auntie.

She saw that the gift was the matching nightgown that went with the robe. Before she could tell her aunt thanks, Aunt Jo was asking her what she thought of the present.

"It's beautiful. You two are so sweet. They really are perfect gifts." Mercy said thinking earlier about what she thought of her current night apparel and tears slid down her cheeks.

"It's not that sweet," Aunt Jo said noticing her tears. "Why are you crying?"

"Is something wrong?" Her mother asked while reaching over to give her a hug.

"No, nothing is wrong. I just had an epiphany." Mercy said after her mother released her from the hug.

"Bet that hurt," Aunt Jo said looking at her with a wry grin.

"Jo," her sister said giving her sister a warning look before taking her daughter's hands in her own. "Tell us what is wrong."

Mercy took a deep breath then gathered up the courage and blurted out, "I want to get married."

The two sisters both looked at each then looked at Mercy before her mother said, "Well, that's wonderful, but to whom are you thinking of marrying?"

"That's the problem. No one wants to marry me." Mercy replied before burying her face in her hands trying to stop the tears from rolling down her face.

There was a small silence, and she knew that all eyes were on her. The sisters had a silent way of communicating with each other. It wasn't long before her mother cleared her throat. "I'm not sure what you are trying to tell us. Is there someone that you want to marry specifically?"

Bless her mother's heart, she was an English teacher to the core. She was always grammatically correct using whom and speaking in a formal way even when emotions were involved.

Mercy shook her head, and wiped away her tears before facing them again. "No, I'm not suffering from unrequited love, but I want to to get married and have babies before I get too old. And the way things are happening in my life now; that is not going to happen unless I began to make some major changes."

"What kind of changes are you thinking about making?" Aunt Jo asked warily.

"Look at me!" Mercy exclaimed pointing to herself from hair to toe. I am boring and frumpy looking. Who's going to look at me twice? Even Jacob Ben Israel wasn't interested. I have to make some major changes to me.

She took a deep breath. "I got to make myself look hotter. I need men to look at me, and I need to start going to places where I am likely to meet single men like clubs and sports bars." She paused waiting to hear her mother's objections. She thought quality women found quality men in church, and if that was the case, Mercy would have been married ten years ago. Then, she told them the biggest news of all when her mother and aunt hadn't interrupted her. "I need to move out and get a place of my own."

The sisters exchanged another glance without saying a word. What would she do if they objected. She couldn't disappoint them both, but the problem was that she loved them and wanted them to be happy, and she didn't want to upset them or make them ashamed of her.

Mercy was surprised when they both turned back to her with identical wide smiles on their faces. Aunt Jo was the first to break the silence. "It's about darn time." She said with a grin on her face.

"We'll help you." Her mother said beaming down at her daughter.