Vanessa is a troubled yet unhappy teenager: her mother is a prostitute and drug addict, her stepfather is a drug addict and a bastard who raped her stepdaughter when she was 11. After her parents are arrested again, she runs away from home and tries to get to her grandmother in Los Angeles.
A certain psychiatrist, Bob Wolverton, offers to give Vanessa a ride to the West Coast. At this time, a sex maniac and killer of underage girls is stalking his victims on the highway. Vanessa becomes a target of the criminal and is in mortal danger.