Eighteen-year-old Eric has just been released from juvenile detention for murdering his mother and stepfather. Now he's looking for some tenderness—tenderness he finds in befriending and killing young girls. Fifteen-year-old Lori has run away from the home that has been invaded by her mother's boyfriend, and is looking for a place where she can once again feel safe. Emotionally naive but sexually precocious, she is also looking for tenderness—tenderness she finds in Eric. Told from their alternating points of view, this story of a partnership that walks a thin line between salvation and destruction speeds to its fateful conclusion with irresistible force.