Gabriella Gigabyte: Secret of the King Cobra

By Tom Sims

Even though shes not quite a teenager, Gabriella Gigliotti is a computer wizard; shes so good with technology that her friends call her Gig, and she helps her father in his electronics repair shop. Her family lives in a rough neighborhood, though, and sometimes there are gang fights. Her mother, a police officer, works hard to protect the area, but theres only so much she can do.

When Gabriella learns that one of her friends may be involved with a local gang, the Cobras, she springs into action. She discovers a portal to police records, and Gabriellas investigative instincts kick in. The more she looks into events surrounding her friend and a missing local girl, the more trouble she finds. But as she gets closer to the truth about one of the toughest gangs in the city, she might run into more danger than she could ever imagine.

This novel tells the story of a young computer genius who uses her skills to help track down the truth about her citys worst gangs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491789261

Tom Sims

Tom Sims is an author, filmmaker, and fund development professional from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has written two other books, Gabriella Gigabyte, for children, and Flix You Missed, a catalog about films from the past ten years that are often overlooked. He first mentioned the idea of an elf who repossesses gifts from naughty children in his column, Observations from Big Daddy, which he wrote for Parent’s Guide, a local parenting magazine. He is a single dad with two wonderful daughters who are grown. When they were kids, he did not threaten them with the story of Repo Elf, but he did indeed have a cell phone address book entry called Santa’s Office that he would dial every so often to keep the two of them in line. The number for the entry went to toll-free directory assistance. Please don’t judge him.

Book preview

GABRIELLA

GIGABYTE

Secret of the King Cobra

TOM SIMS

Cover Art by Tony Perri

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GABRIELLA GIGABYTE

COVER ART BY TONY PERRI

Copyright © 2016 Tom Sims.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8925-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8926-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016902084

iUniverse rev. date: 04/11/2016

Contents

Chapter 1    Fall from the Sky

Chapter 2    Mad Computer Skills

Chapter 3    Cobras Attack

Chapter 4    Ultimate Weapon

Chapter 5    Secret in Chrysler Tower

Chapter 6    In the Country

Chapter 7    Two Cops, No Robbers

Chapter 8    Good Cop, Bad Cop

Chapter 9    Stealth Detective

Chapter 10    Urban Legend

Chapter 11    Stakeout

Chapter 12    Alibi

Chapter 13    Snow Day

Chapter 14    King Cobra

Chapter 15    Divine Confrontation

CHAPTER 1

Fall from the Sky

V oices from the kitchen stirred Gabriella from her sleep, and she could tell something was wrong. She tapped her phone. It was 3:06 a.m. She walked out of her room and past her grandfather Tato’s room. The muffled sound of his sleeping came from behind his closed door. She smiled, remembering what her mom always said about Gabriella’s grandfather: Papa, you may be retired, but your snoring is still hard at work. At the top of the stairs, she stood and listened for a while. Mom and Dad talked in quiet voices. Listening to them was sometimes fun. They would kid with each other and laugh. Tonight, however, there was no laughing, but why?

Her heart started to race.

She walked down the stairs and toward the kitchen, pausing a moment in the shadows of the living room to look at them. They stood in the kitchen; her mother’s face was blank. Her father looked deeply puzzled, like when he tried to fix a TV and it still didn’t work. Gabriella also had seen that look as she helped him in his shop, which she had been doing most every day after school since she was six. His brow curled inward to the top of his nose, but the difference this night was his eyes were watery. As she looked at her parents, she realized not for the first time that they were getting older. Both were short and lightly built. Sprays of gray streaked her dad’s thick black hair. He was second-generation Italian, and he’d always had a dark complexion, but his face looked darker this night. Her mother had bottled-blonde hair and a lighter complexion that made her look as if she could be at home in Norway instead of her native Colombia.

Even her mother’s blank look revealed an expression that Gabriella had rarely seen on her mom’s face. Mrs. Gigliotti was a police officer, so Gabriella reasoned that she had to keep a cool composure during her shifts when she was on the street. Her dad owned an electronics repair shop, and she had seen how friendly and sympathetic he was to his customers. Something was seriously wrong, though, because even her mother was frowning. Gabriella’s stomach churned—she wished that she was dreaming. She emerged from the shadows, and her mother saw her first.

Gabriella, she said, wiping her nose. We have something to tell you.

She looked at her mom and then her dad. Her mother glanced over at her father, but he kept his gaze on Gabriella. That scared her a little. He cleared his throat.

Spike’s dad … he started and stopped, clearing his throat again. He had an accident today. At work. And he … he died.

Gabriella’s eyes widened and began to fill. Her heart felt heavy, and her lip quivered. As the first tear streamed down her face, her nose began to run. She couldn’t speak, and she grabbed a napkin nearby. By the time she could utter a sound, all she could say was, What happened? She felt cold all of a sudden.

Her father walked over to her and put his arms around her, and her mother joined them. The three stood there in the kitchen surrounded by all of life’s reminders—calendars, schedules, Post-it notes, circled memos, piled-up mail, unread newspapers—and they all cried. Gabriella was the loudest with deep waves of sobbing. Her father murmured, Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. Her mother, with her own tears flowing down, only said, So young, as she rubbed her daughter’s back. Gabriella barely heard it but wondered if she meant it for Spike or his dad or for Gabriella herself.

They stood for several minutes. The soft, fading sounds of a cool late-summer breeze, nearby busses, and faraway sirens traveled in through the slightly opened windows of the first floor. Gabriella could hear them, and she often took comfort in those sounds. Sometimes they helped her sleep when she had a lot going through her mind. Her father would say the sounds were an urban orchestra—movement with no rests—but Gabriella didn’t understand that. She just liked them. They brought her comfort most nights—and this one would be the worst yet of her life, she thought.

In the moment, her mother’s cell phone rang. She kept holding Gabriella but retrieved the phone. She had to. It was work.

Yes, she said softly. Yes, I’ll be right in.

Gabriella’s father glanced at his wife.

There’s trouble, she said and pulled away slowly. These gangs fighting. I’ve got to go. Everyone’s being called in to help.

She stood there a moment longer and then left. Gabriella sat with her father in the kitchen. He poured both of them a small glass of water. They didn’t talk much. The open window let in a few more sounds. Sirens. Voices from several blocks away—all yelling. Then some pops, which Gabriella convinced herself were just cars backfiring. She didn’t want to think they were anything else. Her brow began to furrow. He crouched down until she looked into his warm, sympathetic eyes.

You okay? he asked.

I’m worried about Mom, she said and drank her water. Aren’t you?

Every night.

I’m sick of hearing about these gangs.

Where do you hear about them?

Mom talks about them. Gabriella pointed to the open window. And I can hear through the windows. Somebody needs to stop them.

That’s what your mom does, he said. That’s what she always wanted to do—more importantly, it’s what she believes God always wanted her to be. You should always be thinking about what you want to do in life, Gabby, but it’s way more important to think about who God wants you to be. He gulped the last of his water. You’ll always be a success then.

Her dad placed his empty glass on the table. Gabriella heard what he said, but she didn’t always completely understand what he was saying. She finished her water too. She understood his next sentence.

Off to bed, he said with a grunt, standing up.

After tossing and turning, Gabriella finally fell asleep. She started dreaming, the same dream she’d been having for about a year now. She was falling from the roof of her row home in Olney, not the toughest neighborhood in the city but tough enough. This would make the fifth time she had dreamed this. Sometimes she would fall, only to float through the streets below like she was hang gliding, waving hello to her friends and neighbors. They would wave back and smile as if it were absolutely normal to float in the air. Still other times she would see the bricks that made up the front of her house and the other houses as she fell in what seemed to take a long time for just a three-story building, and she never even reached the ground. But this dream was different. She did not feel the control she had in earlier versions. Faster and faster. Kristen would say that if you die in a dream, it means you’re going to die in real life. What did she know?

She saw the sidewalk coming, but her feet didn’t prepare to land like before. The ground came at her as if it was rising to meet her—and she was not gliding or floating as in her previous dreams. Her heart began to beat much faster as she saw the bricks of her home flashing by her too quickly to last very long, and she braced herself for the fall. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. She closed her eyes tight, waiting for the impact.

She shot up in the bed in a cold sweat. It was over, but she wasn’t sure if she had died. She wasn’t sure if Mr. Daniels had died. She tapped her phone. It was almost time to get up. She remembered what was a dream and what was real. Spike’s dad was gone.

Gabriella felt that time stood still during those days before the funeral. She and Spike didn’t play, and he didn’t go to school. She didn’t see Kristen much either. The Danielses (Spike’s family) had always lived next door on the right and the Xi family (Kristen’s) next door on the left. It was as if a dome had dropped over Spike’s house and hers and Kristen’s as well. Maybe it covered the whole block. Spike’s mom was having visitors at her house after the funeral. Spike texted that it would be okay for Gabriella and Kristen to come too.

Gabriella stood by the living room window waiting for Kristen because